In this anecdote from Jami's Baharestan, a foul-breathed man leans insistently over a dying man to prompt the profession of faith (talqin of the shahada), breathing on his face; the more the sick man turns away, the more the man presses closer. Finally the dying man protests: Are you letting me die clean and pure, or do you wish to defile my death with something more impure than death itself? The closing verses observe that people of true worth are rare, that one need not heed every meddler, and that the breath (nafs, the self) of one whose lips reek of ostentation (riya) should not be accepted. The concept distills the teaching: ostentatious, insincere piety and unwanted religious meddling can corrupt even a sacred moment, so that forced observance driven by hypocrisy does more harm than the sincere absence of it.