Last night we attended the Sema at the Cultural Center in Konya. Sema is the ceremony and spiritual practice known in the West as the "whirling dervishes". Mevlana Rumi taught the practice in the 13th century and it has remained important in his school of Sufism. It has also been "adopted" by the current Turkish government as a cultural treasure and tourist attraction!
If you are a tourist in Turkey, you can find "performances" of Sema to attend in larger cities, much like the flamenco performances in Spain. In Konya, the government built a 4000 seat auditorium designed primarily for Sema, and pays an honorarium to the ceremony participants. During this week of the pilgrimage, there are two ceremonies each day all week! Our teachers here have mixed feelings about this attention given to Sema. On the one hand, it preserves and makes accessible this practice to a wider audience and draws spiritual seekers to investigate more about Mevlana and Sufism. On the other hand, the ceremonies are offered with little interpretation of the symbolism and spiritual meaning.
While we were moved and impressed by the beauty of the Sema performance, we were acutely aware that spiritual practice is not a spectator sport! While the meditative practice of ritual turning in a small area of space as a way of expressing love for and experiencing the divine is not an easily accessible practice, its most important meaning arises from doing it, not from reading about it or watching it.
Everything in this world is turning, and how we turn, towards truth, towards God, towards daily attention to what us highest and holiest in our lives, makes all the difference in how our life in the world turns out.
Location:Konya, Turkey
No comments:
Post a Comment