The Little Prince Speaks of Friendship in a Waterless Desert
On the eighth day after the plane breaks down in the desert, the pilot drinks the final drop from his canteen while listening to the merchant’s story. The Little Prince’s tales are beautiful, but the plane remains broken and there is no water. Walking slowly to a well instead of taking a thirst pill sounds admirable, yet a person dying of thirst needs a sip immediately.
The Little Prince nevertheless returns to the joy of having the fox as a friend. The pilot says this is no time to speak of foxes, but the boy answers that friendship is good even if they are about to die. Immediate survival and the meaning of relationship fail to align within the same scene.
The pilot thinks the Little Prince does not recognize danger at all. He seems like a mysterious being who needs neither food nor water and lives on sunlight. I can allow this as part of a fable, yet because the book is not merely a children’s tale, I read it as a mystical color painted over the Little Prince.
The boy then seems to read the pilot’s thoughts and says he is thirsty too, proposing that they search for a well. Looking for one without direction in an endless desert is absurd. Still, they begin walking, and hours later thirst, heat, darkness, and stars make the pilot’s mind grow faint.
The Sentence That Water Is Also Good for the Heart
When the pilot again asks whether he is thirsty, the Little Prince does not answer directly but says water is also good for the heart. The pilot checks other translations because the sentence seems uncertain, yet no clearly different meaning emerges. Literary language sometimes requires slow reading through connected metaphors and symbols.
The pilot’s thirst is physical; without water he may die. The Little Prince’s thirst seems to be described as a longing of the heart for the rose, stars, and a friend. The sentence may therefore mean that water not only relieves the throat but also nourishes the relationships and meanings the heart seeks.
The pilot does not fully understand, but he stops interrogating the boy. When the tired Little Prince sits down, he sits beside him in silence. Leaving a difficult sentence unresolved is better than hastily turning it into an impressive doctrine.
After a pause, the Little Prince says the stars are beautiful because of a flower no one can see. Among innumerable stars is his planet, and on that planet is the rose he left behind. The rose is invisible to the eyes, yet longing for her changes the appearance of the entire sky.
Wheatfields, Stars, and Deserts Change Through Relationship
This resembles what the fox said about the wheatfield. Because of the Little Prince’s golden hair, golden wheat will remind the fox of him after they separate. A field that once meant nothing becomes a sign of waiting and longing after taming.
The Little Prince also says the desert is beautiful. The pilot feels that something quietly shines within dunes where nothing is visible and no sound is heard. The boy explains that the desert is beautiful because it hides a well somewhere.
The pilot remembers the old house of his childhood. A legend said treasure lay buried there, though no one found it and perhaps no one even searched. Still, the story made the entire house enchanting. It became a place that held a secret deep within.
What makes a star, desert, or house beautiful is not immediately visible. Yet it need not be an ungrounded transcendent entity. Relationship, memory, and expectation change how an object is seen. The same star, sand, and building are experienced differently according to the relationships and meanings formed around them.
The Rose Shining Within the Sleeping Little Prince
When the Little Prince falls asleep, the pilot carries him and continues walking. Looking at the pale forehead, closed eyes, and hair moving in the wind, he feels as though he holds an extremely fragile treasure. Nothing in the world seems more breakable.
He tells himself that the body he sees is only a shell and the most important thing is invisible. We cannot immediately conclude that this means an immortal soul hidden inside the body. What moves the pilot is the Little Prince’s loyalty and relationship to one rose.
Even in sleep, the image of the rose shines within him like a lamp. His body is small and fragile, but responsibility toward the rose he tamed and his intention to return make him special. His wrongdoing in leaving her and his decision to take responsibility coexist.
A lamp can be extinguished by a single gust, so it must be protected. The story gradually hints at the Little Prince’s death. The pilot’s sense of fragility arises not merely from the boy’s appearance but from a finite being trying to keep faith with one relationship.
The Invisible Must Be Examined in Two Directions
The Little Prince repeatedly says that what matters is invisible. It asks what is beautiful and precious and where value should be placed. I partly agree that people and relationships should not be judged only by visible criteria such as appearance, money, and size.
Yet talk of the invisible easily slips into Gnosticism and mysticism. Once the visible world is called a shell and invisible souls or transcendent realms are declared real, unverifiable claims become the highest truths. I strongly reject that direction.
Everything invisible must not be thrown into the same basket. Memory, promise, loyalty, and relationship cannot be held in the hand, yet their effects can be confirmed in behavior and life. An immortal soul or punishment after death does not become factual merely because it is invisible.
I intended to discuss both directions, but the question of promise and loyalty grew long, so this lecture concentrates first on what can be affirmed. The negative critique of mysticism is postponed. Recognizing the need for invisible values does not mean believing every invisible claim.
How My Dead Father Remains Within the Family
I speak of my father, who died on December 26, 2020. Even in 2025, conversations with my mother and brother soon return to him. Food, travel, mountains, or television can all connect to an old memory until every story concludes with my father.
He was a distinctive and patriarchal man who caused the family much suffering. He left my mother and children many memories of injustice, anger, and absurdity. My mother’s resentment is so strong that she says he died too soon, after tormenting her until the end without giving her time to retaliate.
He is no longer before us and can no longer change. Yet he remains vivid in the memories of the wife who lived with him and the sons who perceived him from early consciousness. Memories of harm remain, but so do sources of strength, books, and patterns of thought.
My habit of questioning what everyone else sees and looking from a different angle also carries his influence. My body bears genetic conditions from my parents, while my mind bears shared time and the books he kept. This does not mean his soul remains alive; it means one life continues producing effects through relationships.
The Consultation of a Daughter-in-Law Who Lived Seven Years with Her Mother-in-Law
A recent consultation by Venerable Pomnyun featured a woman who had lived with her mother-in-law for seven years. They seem to have moved together so the grandmother could help care for three children, but differences in standards and daily habits made the arrangement unbearable. Different standards produce different judgments, words, and actions.
Mutual patience and understanding might reconcile differences, but conflict deepens when one side forces its way on the other. The questioner says her husband wants to continue living with his mother. Pomnyun replies that adulthood naturally entails independence and advises her to demand a separate household.
I do not know the family’s concrete circumstances or Pomnyun’s full intention. Depending on how abusive the mother-in-law is and how severe the questioner’s suffering has become, living apart may be necessary. I am not declaring the consultation’s conclusion simply wrong.
I nevertheless see another question missing from the answer. The household began with an offer to care for the children, and the grandmother likely helped raise three of them for seven years. After that time, did promises and loyalty arise between them even without a written contract?
The Little Prince Broke Faith When He Left the Rose
This question returns us to the Little Prince and his rose. The pilot finds the sleeping boy beautiful because of his fidelity, or loyalty, toward the rose. Like spouses, lovers, or friends, the two were mutually tamed, and their relationship generated promises not fully written in words.
Unable to endure the rose’s words and behavior, the Little Prince arranged his planet and simply left. Put harshly, he abandoned her and fled, betraying the relationship. They did not sufficiently agree to take time apart, reflect, or meet again.
After traveling, he looks back at his action. He moves beyond seeing only the rose’s vanity and difficulty and begins understanding what she meant to him and what responsibility he held. That is why he asks for a muzzle to protect her from the sheep and plans to return.
A relationship’s value does not endure only while feelings are pleasant. Loyalty appears when a changed and angry present self still reflects on promises formed by an earlier self with another person. The Little Prince’s return is not a denial of what happened but an attempt to take responsibility for a relationship he violated.
Promise Is the Ground of Exchange and Coexistence
Promise is enormously important in human society. If people agree to meet at a certain time and exchange goods, commerce requires trust that both will keep their word. If a neighbor may stab me or plunder my property at any moment, coexistence and trade are impossible.
Rules against theft, lying, and harm recur across societies because they make life together possible. Keeping a promise becomes good and breaking it becomes evil, so moral categories attach themselves to social agreements. Before transcendent command stands a practical condition of coexistence.
As societies grow into states and large organizations, promises are written as laws and codes. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the Code of Hammurabi, and the promulgation of legal codes in Korea’s Three Kingdoms show groups sharing rules and becoming centralized communities. People learn what is permitted and forbidden.
Religion performed a similar role. Teachings in Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Confucianism functioned as social norms and laws in their periods. Strangers could trade and live together through confidence that others followed the same rules.
The Rise of Gods and Religions That Guard Promises
Early gods often deified visible or survival-related forces such as sun, thunder, water, earth, sea, wind, rain, and moon. As societies grew more complex, divine roles expanded toward abstract concepts such as promise, trust, and commerce. A god who watches agreements guarantees the sacredness of contracts.
Believing that a god sees where people do not can discourage the breaking of promises. In periods of weak enforcement, divine punishment and an afterlife may have served as mechanisms of social control. A community sharing one god and rule set could form a larger ‘we.’
Even if the words of Jesus or the Buddha were not originally systems of legal command, religious institutions add structures saying, ‘You must do this, and punishment follows if you do not.’ Divine wrath, hell, rebirth, and karma become tools that turn social agreements into absolute commands.
The necessity of promise must be separated from religious absolutization. Society cannot endure without agreements, but that does not make them eternal good and evil created by a god. We must remember that humans make, revise, and keep rules in order to live together.
The Implicit Promise Formed Through Seven Years of Care
Returning to the consultation, seven years are not trivial. The period from infancy to school age demands the most hands. If the grandmother helped care for three children, the couple received real labor and support.
If they ask her to leave once the children grow and caregiving becomes easier because her habits are now inconvenient, she may feel used while useful and discarded afterward. Even without a signed promise of lifelong cohabitation, seven years of care create expectations and commitments within a relationship.
Conversely, if the woman is enduring severe control and abuse, no one can compel continued cohabitation. Safety and psychological suffering require concrete examination. I am not establishing a new command that caregiving creates a right to lifelong obedience.
I ask whether the decision considers the other person’s position and the help already received. From one side, separation looks like the only answer; from the other, seven years reveal another responsibility. Wisdom unfolds both sets of conditions before boarding one side’s conclusion.
The Limits of Saying All Adults Naturally Separate
Pomnyun’s answer says that animals naturally separate from parents upon adulthood. I doubt that this explains all nature. Many animals care for aging parents or raise young across generations. Mother and daughter cats may help one another raise kittens.
Human childhood in particular lasts very long. Parents and communities must feed, teach, and protect children for years. It is not necessarily unnatural to think that a child who received such sacrifice develops some loyalty toward parents.
Confucian society excessively enforced this under the name of filial piety and created wrongs in which age and authority demanded obedience. Yet the harm of coercive filial piety need not erase all reciprocity of care. Loyalty is not a transcendent obligation but an attitude that recalls what a relationship has given.
For most human history, multiple generations lived together far longer than they lived in completely separated nuclear families. Saying every adult must leave as the sole natural pattern can exaggerate one current social form into an eternal law.
Loyalty Should Be Examined First in Love and Marriage
If asked what matters most in love, I answer promise and loyalty. People may value appearance, wealth, ability, or family background. Yet a lasting relationship requires someone who reflects on shared commitments even when feelings and circumstances change.
I mention Roh Moo Hyun marrying the partner who supported him while he studied for the bar exam rather than abandoning her after passing. This does not serve to idealize a public figure absolutely. It contrasts loyalty with the familiar pattern of leaving a helper after success for a more advantageous partner.
Ending a relationship is not something law should prohibit. Feelings change, and some relationships can no longer continue. Yet if one promises everything while in need and forgets the help after success, calling it personal freedom alone overlooks responsibility created by the relationship.
A wedding vow does not prove loyalty. One must watch how someone treats a past relationship when a loss appears, feelings change, or a better option becomes available. Invisible loyalty becomes visible only through accumulated action.
The Mind Before and After Entering the Toilet
The proverb says the mind differs before and after entering the toilet: urgency changes after relief. A promise made when childcare is desperately needed may look different after the children grow. A lover seen before success may be judged differently after success.
Changing feelings cannot itself be made a sin. Demanding the same emotion forever from impermanent humans is impossible. The question is whether changed feelings allow us to erase earlier promises and another person’s contribution as if nothing happened.
The present and past self are not identical, but neither are they unrelated. The help received and promises made in the past formed present conditions. Loyalty means recalling that connection rather than making the current feeling absolute.
This still does not create an absolute command to keep every promise forever. A violent or exploitative relationship may have to end. Yet even in leaving, one should consider what was received, what was promised, and what consequences the decision creates for the other.
Reversing Gender Reveals Another Judgment
I propose reversing the gender and household direction in the mother-in-law case. Imagine a man moving into his wife’s family home while her mother helps raise three children for seven years. Once they grow, he tells his wife that her mother is stressful and should leave so the couple can live alone. How would the wife feel?
Our society is familiar with women entering husbands’ households and conflicting with mothers-in-law. Within that familiar structure, separation may seem obviously right. Reversing the position makes the demand sound like abandoning one’s own mother after receiving her care.
Perspective-taking is extremely difficult. My stress and injustice appear enormous while the other’s sacrifice fades into the background. This exercise does not command a different conclusion; it asks us at least to reconstruct the same event once from the other side.
People readily condemn parents who abandon children in an institution. When adult children place aging parents in a facility, the language of independence and practical need appears. Not every placement is abandonment, but we should ask why separation in one direction alone becomes normal.
The Nuclear Family Also Produces Lonely Death and Isolated Childcare
The modern nuclear family increases freedom and privacy by separating parents and children, but it creates other costs. Older people die alone, while young couples experience isolated and overwhelming childcare. Many households struggle unless a mother or mother-in-law comes to help.
Multigenerational homes contained much conflict, yet care was less likely to fall entirely on one person. Grandparents, siblings, and relatives could watch children and share household labor. In reducing communal oppression, society also lost some care that communities once provided.
I am not commanding everyone to return to an extended family. Large households eventually require division, and cohabitation creates real control and stress. The point is to resist the simple answer that living separately solves every problem.
Rethinking shared life requires reducing coercion and negotiating boundaries. Workplaces, marriages, parent-child relations, siblings, and friendships all contain stress. If stress alone cannot justify ending every relationship, we need skills of dialogue, compromise, loyalty, and adjusted distance.
People Keep Promises Without Gods or an Afterlife
The importance of promise does not require divine command or absolute good and evil. Agreements are made by humans to live together and may be revised when conditions change. They should generally be kept, but no false story of hell or karmic punishment after death is needed.
Many modern people do not believe in gods, heaven, hell, rebirth, or karma. Do they all live recklessly through murder and plunder? They follow law and form relationships through conscience and trust. Coexistence and sensitivity to others motivate promise without transcendent surveillance.
Religious people often say that without an afterlife humans would live like beasts. Yet dolphins, wolves, and dogs care for young and companions. Animals do not protect offspring because they fear hell. Locating love and cooperation only in religious punishment insults both humans and animals.
I affirm the value of promise while asking us to discard religious falsehoods used to enforce it. People can keep agreements when no god watches and understand reasons not to harm others without an afterlife. That is a more mature basis for social norms.
Do Not Avoid Conflict; Use Wisdom in Real Life
There is no absolute answer to a family consultation. Judgment changes according to the severity of the mother-in-law’s behavior, conversations among the couple, caregiving, and economic conditions. Rather than declaring Pomnyun wrong, I ask that one omitted perspective remain open.
If Buddhist wisdom does not work in real life, Buddhism is pointless. A person absorbed in a private view cannot live with others while demanding that everyone change. Conversely, when a patriarchal tyrant forces the family to obey, telling subordinates only to endure and compromise is also wrong.
I lived long under my father’s coercive and violent authority and was one of its victims. As an adult I still had to speak, fight at times, decide what to accept, and determine distance. If all conflict is feared and suppressed, accumulated tension eventually explodes.
People do not easily change habits formed over a lifetime. Some things must be accepted as they are, while other boundaries must be stated firmly. Relationships adjust when this dialogue is mutual; they become extremely difficult when one side speaks without listening. Wisdom is not magic that removes conflict but the ability to negotiate boundaries and responsibilities in concrete conditions.
Invisible Loyalty That Lets Relationships Endure
The invisible value I ultimately discuss is promise and loyalty. Love, marriage, friendship, and family do not continue only through pleasant days when no one loses. Some things require patience and compromise; others require dialogue, conflict, and revised agreements.
We cannot know another person’s inner mind completely. Someone believed loyal may prove otherwise. That uncertainty does not make loyalty irrelevant. At minimum I can clarify the kind of relationship I want and what commitments I will honor.
The Little Prince left the rose but relearns the meaning of their relationship through travel and attempts to return. The pilot holds the sleeping body like treasure because of the boy’s fidelity toward the rose, not because of appearance alone. Invisible value appears in actual choice and responsibility.
If I could advise young people, I would say: do not look only at appearance and wealth; observe how a person treats promises during hardship and changed circumstances. Before demanding this from another, become such a person yourself. Invisible loyalty is revealed not by words but by repeated action through time.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.