כשעור בית הבליעהThe Length of the Throat

ke-shi'ur beit ha-beli'ahIn Gamatria ↗

The taste ends at the throat; the harm stays.

The surest way to separation is to see how poor the world's pleasures are in themselves. What draws nature to them is the eye's seduction, the same that moved Eve when she saw the tree was good to eat. Food is the most vivid pleasure, and it lasts only the length of the throat. Once swallowed it is forgotten, as if it never was. Plain bread fills as well as fatted fowl, and the meal leaves heaviness, fumes that cloud the mind, and sickness. Dwell on this until the mind despises them by itself. Keeping company with honor-seeking grandees undoes separation. Best of all is solitude: David longed for a dove's wings, and Elijah and Elisha kept to the mountains. And go step by step, adding a little each day, until it becomes nature.

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