Discourses of Rumi

420 V DISCOURSES OF RUMInot drive hunger away. In the same way, spice inhot dishes, sweetness and bitterness in foods,these cannot be seen, yet their taste has a muchstronger effect upon us than how the food looks.Why do you worry about this body? Why areyou so attached to it? You live without it. You arealways without it. When nighttime comes youforget it, but once the day arrives you areabsorbed in your body’s affairs. But you are nevertruly with the body, so why tremble over its concerns.You are not with it for a single hour, but arealways elsewhere. Where are you, and where isthe body?“You are in one valley, and I am in another.”This body is a great deception.Pharaoh’s magicians paused for an instant, likea speck of dust hanging in the air, and gave uptheir forms, for they knew they lived apart fromthe body, and the body was not them. In the sameway, Abraham, Ishmael and all the prophets andsaints, having paused, were indifferent to whetherthe body existed or not.Hajjaj, who smoked hashish, once shouted,“Do not move the door or my head will fall off!”