In Hujwiri's account of Abu al-Hasan al-Kharaqani, when Shaykh Abu Sa'id came into al-Kharaqani's presence he kept silent, listened, and replied only to what he was asked. When his servant Hasan Mu'addab asked why he had fallen so silent, Abu Sa'id answered: «از یک بحر یک عبارت کننده بس» — from a single sea, one expositor is enough.

The saying encodes a point of Sufi adab (spiritual courtesy): when two realized masters draw on one and the same ocean of gnosis, it is fitting that only one of them speak. Silence and deference before a peer of equal station is here a mark of realization, not of ignorance — the same disposition that leads Abu Sa'id, in this section, to name al-Kharaqani his spiritual successor.