Orange County Focus is dedicated on Monday to analysis of community news, a look at what’s ahead and the voices of local people. : In Person : A Former Monk Finds Lessons Along Life’s Path

Ask Dhongchai Pusavat about the nature of wealth and he could talk about his privileged childhood as the son of a Thai businessman, or perhaps his stint as a penniless immigrant wandering Los Angeles in crumbling shoes.

Or he might chuckle over the double irony of his life these days, as a wealthy man who works with the poor in a bankrupt county renowned for its affluence. Most likely, though, if you ask the philosophical Pusavat about life’s riches he will describe the face of a dead man.

Pusavat, 51, is the county’s redevelopment and housing director, but some 35 years ago he was a young Buddhist monk in the steamy mountain jungles of his native Thailand. One of his first lessons was to stare down into a shallow grave to study the moldering corpse of a villager.

“The monks told me, ‘We all become like that,’ ” Pusavat said solemnly. “People try to hide that reality, but when you understand it and face it, you’re born, you grow, you get old, you get sick, you die. When you face that, you understand what is really important. You learn what truth is. What is important? Money? Being rich? No.”

Money is only valuable when it is used to make other people’s lives better, Pusavat said one recent afternoon as he tended to his beloved orchids, which have turned the rear of his Huntington Beach home into a miniature jungle.

Pusavat said “investing” in people is why he became a public servant in the 1970s. But in the aftermath of the county’s crippling bankruptcy, he added, helping the area’s disadvantaged and displaced has become a more daunting task for government.

“We’d better take a deep breath,” he said. “There’s going to be more poor people in Orange County. . . . We need to find long-term solutions for creating jobs for those people. We cannot say, ‘It’s hard times so we’re not going to respond.’ That’s when we’re needed the most.”

Pusavat’s main duties are to oversee the use of federal housing funds in Orange County, but he often goes beyond that, organizing projects that reach out to residents in the thick of violence or poverty.

An example is a job program that recruits gang members to join the construction crews that build housing projects, a system he says has put more than 260 youths to work this year. Another is a fledgling six-bed shelter in El Modena that provides room and board to homeless people willing to work. To qualify, the tenants must turn over their paychecks. At the end of three or four months, the uncashed checks are returned as seed money to start a new life.

“It gives a person pride. It gives them a chance, but not a hand-out,” said Pusavat, who added that he worries that traditional government programs lead to generations of dependency. “They want a chance to struggle and succeed, and we should find ways to help them do that.”

With a gardener’s eye, Pusavat spotted a sickly leaf on one of his orchids. He tended to the plant, a victim of insects, and rattled off the exotic nicknames of its neighbors, many labeled for their distinctive shapes: monkey cup, Chinese slipper, nun’s orchid.

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Pusavat, who became a monk at age 15 following his mother’s death, learned many of his gardening skills from mentors who often cited the wisdom found in nature’s nuances. It was familiar advice: When Pusavat still lived behind the teakwood shutters of his family’s estate, his father often tried to explain that flowers could reveal much about the ways of the world.

“I would not listen,” he said, shaking his head at the memory. “But looking back, I know my father was right.” An example, he said, is the way orchids defy usual gardening techniques. The same applies to people confronted with the urban scene’s poverty and crime.

“A kid in a gang or the homeless, they are like everybody else,” he said. “If you don’t know them, you can’t understand their needs. It’s like an orchid. They are easy to grow, but everyone can’t do it. People try to put them in dirt, or make them live in the cold. But you can’t force rules on living things. You need to understand them to help.”

Pusavat says his early years in the United States taught him a great deal about being an outsider and understanding different people.

His father had sent him in search of his fortune, but the young man struggled with a new land and a strange language. He worked as a fruit picker and pool-hall bouncer before attending college and, eventually, getting a master’s degree in urban planning.

The rotund Pusavat smiled placidly and cupped a yellow orchid bobbing in the midday breeze. He pointed to the plant’s bulging seed pod, which burst open with a pinch. Fine white pollen spilled across his hands before the wind blew it skyward.

“Wherever the seed lands, it will cling and try to grow,” Pusavat said, laughing with delight. Perhaps his mind turned to his own life, or the lives he touches. “On a tree, a wall, it doesn’t matter. It will fight to grow, fight to be beautiful. People can be like that.”