Essays

The Nothingness of Time, by Alexandra Haven

June 22, 2018By Alexandra Haven

“Why do you come to Egypt? Do you come to gain a dream, or to regain lost dreams of old; to gild your life with the drowsy gold of romance, to lose a creeping sorrow, […]

The One Who Flies All Around the World, by Thomas Buckley

May 28, 2018By Thomas Buckley

The dance of wealth among the Yurok tribe

Gastronomy in Ancient China, by Donald Harper

April 21, 2018By Donald Harper

Cooking for the sage king

Participators of Sacred Things, by Roger Lipsey

March 20, 2018By Roger Lipsey

The structure of traditional art

Circles of Time, by J. Stephen Lansing

March 9, 2018By J. Stephen Lansing

Being “old” in Bali

Walking the Maze, by Pamela Travers

February 20, 2018By Pamela Travers

The way in, the way out

You Must Have an Aim, by G.I. Gurdjieff

January 31, 2018By G.I. Gurdjieff

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

The Temple of Amount, by Eliezer Shore

January 31, 2018By Eliezer Shore

Searching for symbol in a world of number

A World of Sound, by Kyle Holton

January 31, 2018By Kyle Holton

Listening to the Yao

Fusterlandia, by Tracy Cochran

January 31, 2018By Tracy Cochran

A visit to Havana, a priceless discovery

What is the miraculous? Our first thought may be that it concerns a supernatural and sensational event. And yet this Summer 2018 issue of Parabola reveals that the most ordinary action—digging a garden or cooking a meal or making art—becomes sensational when it is performed with mindful awareness of what we are doing. Any action may be automatic or creative, repetitious or truly alive, participating in the life that is happening in the instant: “The situation is completely different when my action is not a repetition but something new, an action that can only take place in the present moment to respond to a need that I recognize right now,” writes Jeanne de Salzmann in this issue. Read more>

Stephen Weiss, MD, portrait of Brother David Steindl-Rast, Mt. Saviour Monastery, Elmira, NY

Learning to Die, by Brother David Steindl-Rast

The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a Benedictine monk. In the rule of St. Benedict, the momenta […]

The Art of Cleaning, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

Marion Woodman and the Search for the Conscious Feminine, by Patty de Llosa

“The true feminine is the receptacle of love. The true masculine is the spirit that goes into the eternal unknown in search of meaning. The great container, the Self, is paradoxically both male and female […]

Hearing the Cries of the World, by Mark Nepo

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. […]

To Go Beyond Thought, an Interview with Karen Armstrong

One bright spring day, Parabola met with Karen Armstrong in her suite at the Parker Meridian hotel in Manhattan. The petite, friendly 62-year-old British ex-nun, arguably the most influential commentator on religion in the English-speaking […]

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