Discourses of Rumi

FIHI MA FIHI V 15said nothing. When the day of battle arrived, allthe men fled the field, except that one soldier whofought alone. “There you are,” the king said. “Itwas for this I fed one man as a hundred.”It behooves us to strip away all our prejudicesand seek out a friend of God. However, whenwe’ve spent our whole life in the company of peoplewho lack discrimination, then our own discriminativefaculty becomes weak, and that truefriend may pass us by unrecognized.Discrimination is a quality that is always hiddenin a person. Don’t you see that an insane personpossesses hands and feet but lacks discrimination?Discrimination is a subtle essence withinyou. Yet, day and night you have been occupiedwith nurturing the physical form that does notknow right from wrong. Why have you devotedall your energies to looking after the physical,entirely neglecting that subtle essence? The physicalexists through that essence, but that essence inno way depends on the physical.The light that shines through the windows ofthe eyes and ears—if those windows did not exist,the light would not stop. It would find other win-