The Benefits of Charity
Charity for God's sake has a hundred signs within the heart --
the good deed, a hundred tokens.
Though in charity riches are consumed,
a hundred lives come to the heart in return.
A sowing of pure seeds in God's earth, and then no income! Impossible.
-- Mathnawi [IV, 1757-1759]
From "Jewels of Remembrance," by Rumi, selected and translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, © 1996. By arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, www.shambhala.com.