A Tale on the Disgrace of Overeating

Do you know what strange thing I brought back from Basra? A story sweeter than fresh dates. A handful of us, dressed in the robes of honest folk, were passing along the edge of a date grove. One among us was a walking storehouse of a belly, and from his own gluttony he was utterly wretched. The poor man tightened his belt and climbed the tree, then fell from up there hard, right on his neck. You can't always eat dates and carry them off: that leather sack of a belly ate its fill at last and died. The village headman came and asked, 'Who killed this man?' I said, 'Don't shout at us so harshly.' His belly dragged him down from the branch: a heart too narrow, but guts wide open. The belly is a shackle on the hands and a chain on the feet; the slave to his stomach rarely worships God. When a man is nothing but belly, he becomes a locust, and even a small tidy-bellied ant can drag him off by the foot. Go and cultivate a clean inner self, for the belly is never filled until it is filled with earth.