Become the Earth !

Memoir of a recent visit to Mevlana Museum and tomb ,Konya , Türkiye

“ How should the spring bring forth a garden on hard stone?
Become the soft soil, that you may grow flowers of many colors
For you have been the heart-breaking rock
Once, for the sake of experiment, be like the soft earth !”

Rumi ( Persian scholar and poet 1207-1273)

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to Konya. I have had a great attachment to Rumi’s poetry growing up, reading excerpts from the Masnavi, understanding some of it, enjoying some of it, and wondering about most of it. Sometimes it made sense instantly and sometimes it took years to understand the deeper meanings. The mystery of love and mysticism has always had a strange attraction to it.

So like many others, it had been a lingering dream of mine to visit his tomb in Konya, Turkiye, and I was thrilled when the opportunity arose. There is a serene sense of calm in this city. The whole complex, including the tomb, the adjacent mosque, surrounding shops, and eateries with a view, is commonly known as the Mevlana. It is said this area was previously a rose garden given to Rumi by Seljuk Sultan as a burial place for his father, and interestingly you would see many graves here with roses blooming on them.

The tomb is in the center, under a beautiful turquoise dome, surrounded by what once used to be the dervish lodge—where dervishes were trained. As you enter through the main gate you are welcomed by a marble-paved courtyard with a beautiful ablution fountain in the center. There are cells/rooms for dervishes along the outer walls,each of them covered with a small doom, a prayer room, a kitchen, and an eating area. These areas have been converted into a museum. You can walk into the rooms and view the various artifacts and read a brief note about their history.

It is a surreal experience! Looking into these rooms, these time capsules, as if looking through a little window to the past. So many different people from different times would have lived through these cells, they would have gone through their internal journeys ascending the stages of spirituality, and fighting their internal battles. How many would have given up? How many were successful? What was their idea of success?
What kind of life would it have been?

Laden with these questions,as you enter the community room or semahane - the hall for sema ( ritual hall ), it is not hard to imagine the sound of ney - the flute and other instruments and visualize the dervishes whirling to the soul-touching poetry and dhikr, trying to disconnect to connect through this musical meditation! Examples of some of these instruments are displayed in the museum along with the dervish clothing, caps, and Masnavis.

And then, you take your shoes off as you walk into what used to be the prayer hall , there are holy books on display along with the Masnavi. Mevlana’s sarcophagus is placed under the turquoise dome, with the actual burial chamber beneath it. There are graves of some of his followers in this area as well.

Just before seeing the sarcophagus and paying my prayers and respect, something on the wall caught my eye. It was a beautiful black plaque with roses on it, the name of Allah on the top, and Mevlana down below. At the bottom of this plaque was a piece of poetry by Rumi in Turkish. I knew some of those words but it did not make much sense at the time, so I took a picture to find out more about it and kept walking towards the graves and paid my respect.

As I was walking out of the prayer hall area, I stopped by this window which had an internal frame and an external one separated by a few meters, the light almost obscuring the view, but when you look closely you can see the roses on the thorny branches. So many of them! what an extraordinary view. The explosion of light and followed by all the greenery and roses as your eyes adjust to the brightness. A window that opens towards the outside as well as towards the inside. I stayed here for a few minutes, taking it all in and attempting to capture some of what I could see and feel through a picture.

When I walked out I saw the other side, what I saw from the inside was a rose garden planted on a small graveyard.

I sat down in a corner and found the translation for the poetry on the plaque I had just seen.

“ How should the spring bring forth a garden on hard stone?
Become the soft soil, that you may grow flowers of many colors
For you have been the heart-breaking rock
Once, for the sake of experiment, be like the soft earth !”

1- Rumi - Mevlana Celaddin Rumi is a 13th century Muslim Saint and Anatolian mystic known through out the world for his exquisite poems and words of wisdom .

2- Dervish- mystic/monk . A member of a Muslim religious group ( sufis) who has chosen simple way of life. Detaching from the pleasures of the world.

3-Sema - is a Sufi ceremony performed as a part of the meditation and prayer practice.