English
On Generosity: The Chosen Creed
Our elders, who stood apart from the great men of past ages for the soundness of their judgment and the sharpness of their insight, examined this matter with the utmost care, and their enlightened minds grasped the flaws of generous conduct. So they labored to guard their wealth and preserve their comfort, taking as their guide the plain words of Scripture, 'Eat and drink, but do not be wasteful,' and again, 'God does not love the wasteful.' They saw clearly that the ruin of the old houses had come from open-handedness and squandering. Whoever made a name for himself in generosity never knew peace again: the greedy turned toward him from every side, each stripping away what he had with a flattering word or a fresh excuse. And that poor simple-hearted soul, deceived by their nonsense, would soon see all he had inherited and earned brought to waste, ending up ruined and in need. But whoever leaned on the habit of stinginess, taking shelter in miserliness from the aims of schemers and the pleas of beggars, escaped the trouble of people and passed his life in plenty and ease.
They say that wealth stands in place of life itself, and since one must spend precious years to acquire it, it would be far from reason to let it perish, say, on clothing, drink, food, or the ease of a body that will die anyway, or to squander it merely so that others might praise him. And so, if a great man has money, you cannot pry a single coin out of his miserly grip with a thousand pincers. Suppose the whole realm of a king and emperor belonged to that one man:
That stone the oil-pressers use to crush the seed,
if you set it on his belly, would not make him break wind.
And this verse fits the same theme:
Until the word 'give' is dropped from talk with him,
he would sooner die of colic than pass wind.
Now the masters of miserliness, whom people call the prudent great men, have written testaments and composed whole books on this subject.
A story: one of the great men once told his son, 'My boy, know that the word 'no' drives away misfortune, and the word 'yes' multiplies calamities.' Another, among his final counsels, said, 'My son, take care to keep your tongue from the word 'yes' and let 'no' always be on your lips. Be certain that as long as your dealings rest on 'no,' your affairs will rise high; and as long as your word is 'yes,' your heart will be sunk in grief.'
A story: death came to one of the great men, the Croesus of his age. Losing all hope of life, he called in his beloved children, the young ones of a house of miserliness, and said: 'My children, for a long age I have suffered the hardships of travel and home in gathering wealth, and I have squeezed my own throat with the claws of hunger until I saved these few gold coins. See that you never grow careless in guarding them, and never lay a spending hand on them. Know for certain that:
God created gold to be precious;
whoever treated it cheaply became cheap himself.
'If someone comes to you and says, 'I saw your father in a dream, and he was craving a sweet stew,' beware of being fooled by his trick, for I will not have said any such thing, and a dead man eats nothing.'
'And even if I myself appear to you in a dream and make the very same request, pay it no heed, for such things are called jumbled dreams; that is only a demon showing itself, and I would never crave in death what I did not eat in life.' He said this, then handed his soul over to the keeper of Hell.
A story: another great man is said to have haggled beyond all measure over two barleycorns in a deal with someone. When they told him, 'This trifle is not worth such fuss,' he replied, 'Why should I let go of an amount of my wealth that could last me a day, a week, a month, a year, my whole life?' They asked, 'How so?' He said, 'If I spend it on salt for my food, it lasts a day; on the bathhouse, a week; on a bloodletter, a month; on a broom, a year; and if I spend it on a nail and drive it into the wall, it lasts a lifetime. So why should I let a blessing on which so many of my needs depend slip away from me through negligence?'
A story: a great man is said to have held each loaf, one by one, before his eyes in his blessed hand whenever bread was baked in his house, saying, 'May no harm ever touch your days!' before handing it to the storekeeper. When the smell of the bread reached his servants and household, they would say:
You are behind the curtain while we bleed our hearts out;
ah, if the curtain fell, what an uproar we would raise!
A story: in these very days a nobleman's son gave his cloak to a dervish. The fault-finders carried word of this to his father's ears, and he scolded his son over it. The son said, 'I read in a book that whoever seeks greatness must give away all he has in self-sacrifice; longing for that, I gave away this cloak.' The father said, 'You fool! You have misread the word 'give away'; you got it wrong by mistaking the dots. The great men said: whoever seeks greatness must store up all he has, so as to be honored by it. Do you not see how all the great men today busy themselves with hoarding?' And the poet says:
Little by little it comes to a great heap;
grain in the storehouse is gathered seed by seed.
A story: one of the great men of the age said to his slave, 'Buy a bit of meat with your own money and cook me a meal from it, and I will set you free.' The slave rejoiced, made a roast, and brought it before him. The master drank the broth, then handed the meat back to the slave. The next day he said, 'Make a saffron chickpea stew with that meat, so I may eat it and set you free.' The slave obeyed, made it, and brought it. The master gulped it down, then handed the meat back. On the third day the meat had gone rotten and useless. The slave said, 'Master, for the sake of God let it be, and I will remain your slave all the same. If truly some good passes through your blessed mind, then for God's sake, set this scrap of meat free!'
Truly, only one who manages his living with such prudence can be called great and far-sighted. And so, as long as he is in this world, he lives cherished and sought after, and in the next world the loftiness of his rank is beyond all telling, measure, or description.