Archive

I would first and foremost like to follow an age-old injunction that every writer, before giving out any advice or critique to anyone else, should obligingly give an honest account of their journey. So before doing an appraisal of the 27th All & Everything International Humanities Conference I offer a short yet pertinent brief. Having…

Paul Reps (1895–1990) was an American artist, poet, and author best known for his pioneering book that helped introduce Zen to the West, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Parabola is honored to have the opportunity to […]

Giving and receiving in a Bolivian marketplace

Tasting the forbidden fruit

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the current issue of Parabola, “Hope,” in this episode of the magazine’s free monthly podcast.

On true seeing

“Give it one week of hard frost,” my new husband says, “and all the green will be gone.” He has slowed the car to let two adolescent does cross the road, and we watch them vanish neatly into the ditch on the other side. […]

Within the chaos, a door to “the inexhaustible Now”

“Here we have the ground zero cafe,” says Bart Ives, gesturing toward a white frame building standing in the open center courtyard of the Pentagon.

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares Jim White’s moving essay “The Esoteric Shakespeare” and Scottish and Chinese fairy tales, as well as wise advice from Rainer Maria Rilke, in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free monthly podcast.

Expressing our essential self

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares editorial director Tracy Cochran’s “Fusterlandia” and Elizabeth Napp’s “An Education in Peace,” as well as some wise words on leadership from Octavia Butler, in this episode of Parabola Magazine’s free monthly podcast.

An Interview with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from November 4, 2006 until November 1, 2015.

The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi: Illustrated Edition by William C. Chittick. Foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

Mindfulness and the roots of war

Three notable biographies from the Gurdjieff Work

Llewellyn-Vaughan-Lee photographed by Richard Whittaker One August day recently in Northern California, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee sat down with Parabola in to speak about free will and destiny.  The English-born Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi mystic and lineage holder in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Sitting in…

Dr. Joseph K. Dixon, A Native American sends smoke signals in Montana, June 1909, National Geographic Creative. The sacred pipe of the Native Americans is a potent symbol of relationship. Through it the human breath sends to all the six directions the purifying smoke that connects the person to the divine and…

On Adin Steinsaltz and the power of hope

The secret prices of love

A white rose opens in a quiet arbour
Where I sit reading Dante, Paradise
unfolding in me, opens hour by hour […]

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the Fall 2021 issue of Parabola Magazine, Fire, including the lead essay by Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, “Fire Season.” Read the full issue by subscribing to Parabola. Parabola Magazine · Parabola Podcast Episode 50: Fire

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, “Ways of Healing,” in PARABOLA Magazine’s podcast. Learn more about this issue or become a subscriber at parabola.org. This episode also includes Kenneth Lawrence’s retelling of the Japanese tale “Kiyotsune.” Please consider supporting this podcast and Parabola Magazine by purchasing a back issue or becoming a subscriber. This…

A spiritual master on what it takes

Ever since human beings discovered that we live in an expanding, evolutionary universe with billions of other galaxies, it has become increasingly fashionable to suggest that human existence is essentially meaningless …

Joshua Boettiger, “Alone, with Others”

A visit with the famed nun and art historian

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from PARABOLA’s forty-three year archive on the theme of remembering.

Sick of what it is called
Sick of the names
I dedicate every pore
To what’s here.
—Ikkyu

Bön monks flee the invaders of Tibet

“We have been thrown into this world without knowing why or how. As people sometimes say, “I didn’t ask to be born.” And you didn’t (at least as far as you can remember). But you are here, and you have to deal with it.”

We urgently need your help to carry on. Parabola is a nonprofit, independent, reader-supported publication. In order to publish each issue, we depend directly upon the generosity of readers like you. Without your support, there would be no Parabola. Parabola brings timeless wisdom to troubled times. As a longtime reader of the magazine has written,…

THE BHAGAVAD GITA: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life by Ravi Ravindra. Reviewed by Vinita Kaushik Kapur.

The dance of wealth among the Yurok tribe

Anonymous / Jewish Retold by Maia Zelkha

Cinderella slaves for years for her heartless stepfamily; Beauty offers her life to the Beast at her father’s request. […]

Stephanie Unger is a writer who lives in Buffalo, NY. She has studied poetry at workshops led by Martha Heyneman and others at the Rochester Folk Art Guild in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

Among the tasks or “yogi jobs” a participant can volunteer for during silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, a Buddhist meditation center in rural Massachusetts, the most resonant in every sense is that of bell ringer.

The spiritual awakening of a world-class drunk

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the current issue of Parabola, BALANCE.

Happiness is everywhere. Not that anyone is claiming to be really, truly happy but everyone is talking about wanting to be happy. Wanting to be happy is not news. […]

A lively report from the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions

The trouble with goats

Virgin and Child in Majesty, 1150–1200, Made in Auvergne, Walnut with paint, gesso, and linen Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where…

Fire Creates. Fire Cooks. Fire Kills. Fire also kisses. It kisses death from life and life from death.

An interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai

All it takes is one blue rowboat tied to a buoy,
and its reflection, and this moment
for me to go remembering everything. …

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, Generosity and Service, in Parabola‘s monthly twenty-minute podcast.

Previously unpublished commentary from Alan Watts, a pioneer of East-West spirituality.

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

Discovering the divine in her own backyard

James George is a retired Canadian diplomat who served with distinction as High Commissioner to India, and Ambassador to Nepal and Iran. Chögyam Trungpa called him “a wise and benevolent man, an ideal statesman,” and the Dalai Lama refers to him as an “old friend.” He has known many important spiritual teachers of the twentieth…

Reflections from a Death Row inmate; inspired thoughts from a Sikh guide

Stephanie Unger is a writer who lives in Buffalo, NY. She has studied poetry at workshops led by Martha Heyneman and others at the Rochester Folk Art Guild in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

There is a middle ground, a basic Reality embracing self and Self. It may be called my true nature. To discover what
prevents me from the experience of it, I have only to look at myself, just as I am. […]

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

Was she “first among the apostles” of Jesus Christ?

Rafe Martin offers a retelling of a traditional Buddhist Jataka tale.

Anonymous / African

Retold by Nartana Premachandra

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

Diving into the well of creativity

Searching for symbol in a world of number

A lyrical song of love, nature, the sacred

A powerful remembrance of war and peace

This song comes from a place where the angels are present, where light is born, where the future is written.

A review of “George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia” by Jeff Zaleski

The Descent offers a chance to look clearly at tired habits of thought and action. A woman may finally admit to an addiction or see how some long-denied pattern of action has failed her time and again. The Return offers a chance for something to be born or recovered. A woman may reclaim a talent…

Listening for an answer beyond words

This story is so old we don’t know who told it or who it’s about, except that it speaks to all of us. We no longer know if it was a “he” or “she” at the center of the story. […]

Impressions from the land of Rumi

On my college campus in the late Spring of 1970, I witnessed the events surrounding the deaths of four Kent State students from National Guardsmen’s bullets. Something changed in me.

When you accept the state of being a stranger, you are no longer a stranger. […]

Learning to love winter’s night

To cherish the divine spark

A report from the new Goddess Spirituality

Despite acclaim, even adulation, garnered from his theater and film work, including such classic films as The Holy Mountain and El Topo, the author found himself in a state of doubt—of spiritual questioning. …

A tale of snake handlers, faith healers, and speakers in tongues.

Story editor Betsy Cornwell and Parabola intern Surnaí Molloy read excerpts from the Summer 2021 issue, Young & Old, in this episode of our free podcast.

For the last five or so years, as readers may know, I’ve been the poetry Editor at Parabola magazine, while also fulfilling various other duties as a Senior Editor. […]

On silent retreat, a woman finds connection from PARABOLA, Vol. 37:2, Summer 2012: Alone and Together.

King Salomon seeks paradise with the help of an eagle

Waken, Wala!
Wala! Awake!
From thy long sleep,
Slumberer, wake at my call! […]

Many people may be surprised to learn that the surface of our brain is actually dark and that this darkness has consequences for our experience of consciousness and transformation itself, including our ultimate transformation at death. It also has consequences for the most subtle form of light we know, the light we associate with religious…

Making the world her own

Eight traditional ways to wholeheartedness and authenticity

Photograph courtesy of Monastero di Bose “There must be monasticism in the twenty-first century!” So said a friend not long ago. Both his implicit protest and his conviction make sense. The landscape of the spirit in the West would be torn and lacking if the monastic way vanished in our time….

BLACK ELK, LAKOTA VISIONARY: The Oglala Holy Man and Sioux Tradition. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

A conversation with physicist Leo Piilonen

How deeply we fear being nobody. One way to think of the ego is as a defense against pain, particularly the pain of being no one.

Remembering the beloved poet

A faithful companion

Travers in the role of Titania in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, c. 1924 (Wikipedia) It is not ignorance. Rather, one could say, a particular process of cognition that has little or no use for words. It is part of our heritage at birth, the infant’s first primer. And the…

This episode shares excerpts from Parabola‘s current issue, “Mercy and Forgiveness.”

Whoever you are: in the evening step out | of your room, where you know everything …

Over 2,500 years ago, Peter Kingsley tells us, Parmenides and Empedocles laid the basic foundations for the world and culture we now live in.

I follow two rules. The first is that my presence is invisible and silent. The film belongs to the storytellers. The second is to do as much research as possible, trust the material, and never film re-creations.

Continuing Orthodox monasticism’s oldest unbroken tradition, Sinai monks still liturgize, shoeless, over the roots of the Burning Bush. On the holy ground where Moses was commanded to remove his sandals—together with all earthly logic—monks turn diversity’s polarizing forces to unity: some of the ways St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai (Egypt) brings Byzantium’s patristic spirit…

What we need is right at hand