Aslam

sage Ibn Salim said: No disease can attack a man except death who eats according to rules bread of pure wheat. He was asked:
What are its rules? He said: To eat it after being hungry and to rise up before satisfaction. A certain experienced physician said with condemnation of excessive eating: The most beneficial of all foods which are allowed to enter the stomach is pomegranate and the worst is salt, yet salt in small quantity is better than pomegranate and the worst is salt, yet salt in small quantity is better than pomegranate in large quantity. The Prophet said: Fast and you will be healthy and the body will be cured of the diseases on account of sting, hunger and little eating and the heart will be free from the diseases of infidelity, self conceit and other diseases.

(9) Another benefit of hunger is little expense. If you practice little eating, a little expense will be sufficient. The belly of a man becomes heavy who eats to his heart's content. He thinks every day for earning foods and says: Today what shall I eat? He roams throughout the day in earning foods and then falls in to unlawful earnings and commits sins or he earns lawful things but faces dishonor. Little expense comes to my mind. The sage Ibrahim-b-Adham being asked about high prices of food stuffs, said: Give-up these food stuffs and make them cheap. The saint Sahal Tastari said: A glutton is condemned lazy in divine service, (2) if he is a trader, he is not safe from dangers, (3) if anything comes to him he does not do justice to himself. In a word, attachment to the world is a cause of destruction of a man and the cause of this attachment is belly and sexual passion, and the cause of sexual passion is full satisfaction of belly. Little eating removes all these evils. The Prophet said: 'Knock at the door of Paradise by hunger.' He who is satisfied daily with one piece of bread becomes free from want. He does not depend on the people, gets free from sorrows and sufferings and can engage himself fully in divine service and trade of the next world. He then becomes one of those of whom God said:
There are men whom business and buy and sale can not divert from the remembrance of God .

(10) Another benefit of hunger is to be ended with the attribute of charity and of giving up self-praise. One who keeps himself hungry and thirsty removes the hunger and thirst of another with his own meal and gives in charity his excess food to the orphans and the poor. On the Resurrection Day, he will take

\jo\-Ul Greed and suxual passion 79

shelter under the shadow of his charity. What he eats is saved in privy and what he gives in charity is hoarded in his treasury.
This is the gift of God. A man has got no wealth except what he stores up in his treasury by charity, what finishes after he eats and what gets old after he puts it on. So eat little. To spend in charity excess food is better than to eat with satisfaction. I [