Archive

On true seeing

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 […]

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

Walking in the footsteps of the first Buddhist women

Opening ceremonies, Cherokee pow-wow, North Carolina, 2011 Reading about Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and countless other Indian tribal elders and chiefs made me regret that I would never know them. They had vanished and with them a way of relating to others we can call emotional intelligence. Not the intelligence…

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

A poem by Walt Whitman in our issue, Happiness.

A child visits her ancestral land

They say the legendary hitter Ted Williams could see the seams of the ball as it came out of the pitcher’s hand. …

The great saint follows her heart to the Divine

Homespun advice to a young man in need

Sage advice from a welcome voice

King David, Leonard Cohen and the Search for Meaning

“Some men believe in the power and value of suffering,” writes Thomas Merton. “But their belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power, no value of its own.”

The special power of classic films

Kneading bread, baking a soul

Finding life between sand and sea

All movies are an illusion. We think we are seeing motion but in fact we are seeing twenty-four still pictures every second. Half the time the screen is actually black. Yet movies seem so real, and some have the potential to reveal great truth. […]

Jacob Needleman’s voice has been prominent in the conversation about man’s inner possibilities for some forty years.

What the bees—and the Bushmen—know

Helen Berger, “A Shift in Vision”

“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. […]

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares PL Travers’ stunning essay “Walking the Maze” and William Segal’s wise poem “The Middle Ground” in this episode of Parabola Magazine’s free podcast.

Searching for her place in God’s house

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

Finding the true king in his cage

Lynda A. Archer

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.

Reconnecting to the sacred, from a Sufi teacher

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.

King Salomon seeks paradise with the help of an eagle

During the Nazi Occupation of Paris, Gurdjieff and his students dared to meet late into the night….

Lascaux Cave Paintings, ca. 15,000 BC Dreams and art are the smoke signals connecting the one tribe over time. Stories and myths do the same. Often we are so greatly taxed by circumstance that we lose the larger view of time and how we are always related, not only to those…

“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.”

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head […]

“Does mind exist?” asks neuroscientist Daniel Siegel, as he opens a two-day conference on his favorite subject […]

A guide to exploring, inner and outer

A journalist and a monk exchange revelatory letters

Expressing our essential self

Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, with Peggy Bagley, “Spiritual Laws: The Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah”

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

Snow White. Heinrich Leutemann or Carl Offterdinger, late nineteenth century When I was three or four years old, I started to grow afraid that I was evil. That year I had the worst nightmare of my life thus far: intense, consuming, and hyper real in the way that only very young children’s nightmares…

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Ursula K. Le Guin’s “A Parabola Bestiary: Bear” and Eleanor O’Hanlon’s “Remarkable Beings” in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free monthly podcast

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

A remarkable gallery of Heart Sutra Art

Inside an Ayahuasca ceremony

The seasons and the Cosmos

The language of life asks for our ears and calls for our souls.

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

The photo project “Icon and Mirror” by Pola Rader analyzes the Orthodox woman and her social role in feminist context.

Encountering eternity in the treasures of Egypt

In April 1976, Mother Teresa spoke before the United Nations. The following day, she was interviewed by spiritual teacher and radio host Lex Hixon. What follows are some of Hixon’s introductory remarks and a brief portion of his rare interview with Mother Teresa.

On Adin Steinsaltz and the power of hope

Many things in the Philokalia are said about “passions.” This word has not quite the same meaning as it has in ordinary language […]

A life-changing encounter with spiritual authority

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

The extraordinary inner life of a great public figure.

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

A miraculous visit to Machu Picchu

Advice and exercises from a Qigong master

From slavery to the priesthood

The spiritual awakening of a world-class drunk

The annual winners of the Poetry of the Sacred Contest (2021), chosen by the Center for Interfaith Relations.

Saint Anthony Abbot Tempted by a Heap of Gold, Tempera on panel painting by the Master of the Osservanza Triptych, ca. 1435, Metropolitan Museum of Art “As I commute to work every day, I leave behind a quiet country road for a highway that takes me to the city. Nature still…

“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.

The science and spirit of awareness

Welcoming the end of the journey

“GURDJIEFF RECONSIDERED: The Life, the Teachings, The Legacy” by Roger Lipsey. Reviewed by Jeff Zaleski

The idea of a “fall of man” is not confined to Christendom. Krishnamurti in his famous dialogues with physicist David Bohm on “The Ending of Time” asked the question: What went wrong in human life? …

Cezanne, Fruit and Jug on Table, Detail (1890-94). “Before she could speak, my daughter taught me the language of silent things: fruits, flowers, an oaken chair. I came to understand, through my relationship to this small being, why the word adult forms the root of adulteration and adultery. Watching her, it became…

The mystical heart of silence

Although it felt like flight, I knew the fall was wrong: body upended, working to right itself even as it spiralled head-first, it seemed, down. I’d gone over the tiniest cliff, from darkened footpath to an unseen recessed lawn. On my back, I looked up at faces—my husband Christopher, my step-daughter Miriam, a nurse who’d…

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

Three notable biographies from the Gurdjieff Work

The summer after I graduated from college, days before I moved to New York City to launch a real adult life, I saw a ghost—an apparition, a spirit, an angel.

Laozi, Investiture of the Gods at Ping Sien Si, Pasir Panjang, Perak, Malaysia Photograph from the Ping Sien Si Temple in Perak, Malaysia taken by Anandajoti. My father had many good qualities; unfortunately, equanimity was not one of them. Known for a ferociously bad temper, he once threatened a one-armed theater…

A review of John Teasdale’s “What Happens in Mindfulness” by Cynthia Bourgeault

In the darkness, the Buddha found light

Rare wisdom on “how to see.”

THE STILLNESS OF THE LIVING FOREST: A Year of Listening and Learning by John Harvey. Reviewed by Jan Cheripko

A transformative discovery lights the way

“Often I have come across stern pronouncements directed at people like me: One cannot dabble, say the priests and scholars. Spirituality is not a tasting menu. “New Agers” who borrow a bit of this religion and a bit of that, while discarding the parts they don’t like, will never have anything but a shallow and…

An anonymous Buddhist tale translated from the Pali and retold by Margo McLoughlin

Eight traditional ways to wholeheartedness and authenticity

The Golden Rule Tetraflexagon is a magic device created by Steffan Soule in order to teach the Golden Rule.

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

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

The nature of wisdom is necessarily esoteric, because it subsists on a level which both transcends and is internal to, anything we can directly observe. …

A conversation with physicist Leo Piilonen

Gitanjali Babbar wanted to walk to the Freedom Tower. This cold day in New York City marked the end of her first trip to the United States. …

Sound, scientific advice on attaining happiness

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

TIMELESS IN TIME: Sri Ramana Maharshi. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

Julian Nyca, Golden Temple, Amritsar, India, Wikimedia Commons The night Nimo, Jay, and I arrived in Amritsar, India, we made a cursory survey of the Sikh Golden Temple, wandering around the outer area and meditating at its river banks. The next morning, we woke up at 3:00 A.M. to get there…

Transforming repetition into renewal

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

How the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca created a fiesta of music.

A conversation with wildlife educator Steve Karlin