out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
My favorite poem from this year’s MTA Poetry in Motion selection is by Rumi, the highly influential 13th century Persian Sufi mystic and poet.
Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
After Rumi’s death, his followers founded the Mevlev Sufi order, which you probably don’t know that you know about but you do because we know them today mainly as the whirling dervishes. I’ve always found them visually arresting (photo essay, short video clip) but never knew the story behind it.
The dance, or Sema, is a mystical journey in which “the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the “Perfect”; then returns from this spiritual journey with greater maturity, so as to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination against beliefs, races, classes and nations.” Which is a fancy way of saying that Rumi was big on humans evolving past all the classifications we cling to—even those of religion. Not something you’d expect from a religious leader today, let alone one born seven centuries ago. I wonder if we’ll ever get there.
A lot of mystics from various different religious traditions saying exactly the same: Hinduists, Buddhists, Christians, Daoists, etc, etc…
Religion means reconnect literally.
Rumi is not persian… he was ottoman and and turk but in 13th century persia was ottoman and he lived there. But now his temple is in konya whis is a city of turkish republic. and sema is still being done in this city by his followers.
Actually he was born in modern-day Afghanistan (in Balkh, or possibly Wakhsh in modern-day Tajikistan) but his family moved to Konya (modern-day Turkey) where he spent most of his life. So, he’s both.