In this tale from Jami's Haft Awrang, a frog dwelling at the edge of the sea ceaselessly praises the sea, declaring that everything he sees and knows comes from it and is, in truth, the sea itself. A group of fishes overhear him; love of the sea inflames their hearts, and they set out on an arduous quest to find it. The bitter irony is that the fishes are already immersed in the very sea they seek: their frantic outward search causes them to lose the jewel of life, and they recognize the sea only at the moment they are cast onto dry land and perish.

The allegory dramatizes the Sufi doctrine of divine immanence (the Real, al-Haqq, as nearer to the seeker than the seeker is to himself) and the paradox of seeking what one already possesses. The seeker who chases God as a distant external object mistakes the medium of his own existence for an absent goal, and grasps this truth only through the shock of separation or death. It teaches that gnosis (ma'rifa) requires perceiving the Belo...