The Sea
Will be the Sea
Whatever the drop’s philosophy.
Farid ud-Din Attar (c. 1145–1221) was a Persian Sufi poet
and mystic from Nishapur whose writings profoundly
influenced later Sufi masters including Rumi
“This quote is a line from a poem of the Sufi poet Attar, who lived a generation before Rumi. He’s famous for his book length poem called The Conference of Birds, I love that it points to the unnamable divine reality, and basically all the philosophy, all the different traditions, we’re all just guessing, The essential meaning is a classic Sufi metaphor: no matter how a single drop of water intellectualizes or theorizes about its own nature, the vast ocean remains what it is regardless. It points to the idea that ultimate reality (the sea, often standing for God or the Divine) is unaffected by the limited perspectives, opinions, or “philosophies” of the individual self (the drop).
Mark Nepo is a spiritual teacher
and author of many books including:
The Language of the Soul: How the Words
You Choose Shape the Life You Live
