In Section 14 of Jami's Baharestan, a king asks a sage for counsel, and the sage exposes the irrationality of avarice through one pointed question. Asked whether he loves gold more or his enemy more, the king admits he loves gold; the sage then observes that in the end the king abandons what he loves (the hoarded gold, left behind at death) while carrying away what he hates (the enmity earned in amassing it), since the wealth passes to a rival. The distilled ethical teaching:

1. Attachment to wealth breeds universal enmity: greed for silver and gold turns the miser into an adversary of all people, especially the rightful owners from whom riches are seized by oppression and trickery.
2. The contradiction of the hoarder: one loves the gold yet keeps as enemy the very owner of it, an arrangement that reason (khirad) cannot sanction.
3. The counsel that contains all counsels: to grasp that leaving behind the beloved (gold) while bearing away the foe is contrary to the f...