Throughout the countryside, peasants felt that for the first time a dynamic, forceful national leader had made the prosperity of the rural areas his main priority. Thaksin fortified his position with a somewhat heterodox Buddhist concept in a country where Buddhist concepts are part of the political discussion. The dominant philosophical strain of Buddhism, associated with the king, stressed what was called the sufficiency economy: the notion that a certain economic simplicity, an absence of greed, and an acceptance of modest circumstances were virtuous. The desire for more was a manifestation of the illusion of the self.