Archive

The remarkable story of A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson

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. […]

Looking back, I see my five years in India as the high-point of my diplomatic life, and my most memorable time in India as the four days in January of 1971 before Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s official visit to India. […]

A review of Ellen Dooling Reynard’s “No Batteries Required”

“At the very outset of the journey inwards, there is a crossroads. Signs point in both directions, and I am pulled both ways. I find that I am double. I want something and at the same time I don’t want it; I love and hate the same person. I am light and dark; I aspire…

A child visits her ancestral land

If you dream of finding a great Teacher, a Master, the operative advice is, “get real.” Great teachers may appear once in a hundred years. …

Where Jesus walks with the Buddha

There must be more to me than this. Have you ever thought this? It’s a little moment of awakening rather than an ordinary thought—a clearing in the clouds, a a distant memory, a knowing that there is more. More to life. More to me. This realization can feel like hitting bottom.

Training the body, training the mind

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

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.

Από τη στιγμή που ιδρύθηκε, πενήντα χρόνια πριν, η κοινότητα του Bose ήταν προορισμένη να λειτουργήσει ως οδοδείκτης […]

A young woman navigates the roads outside—and within

Walking with an Inkling or two

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

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.

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

The Unknown — our beautiful An­glo-Saxon word, intimate, reverberant, profound, not so much to be understood but stood under while it rains upon us — that is something I could well live with and, indeed, have revered, cherished, and tried to serve for many a year and day.P.L. Travers, “The Interviewer,” from Vol. 13 No.…

The special power of classic films

Possessed: A Santeria ceremony

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

Born in India in 1918, B.K.S. Iyengar has been teaching yoga since the age of seventeen. An innovative and exacting teacher for more than sixty years, he has guided the establishment of many centers of Iyengar Yoga worldwide. His message is “Yoga is for everyone.”

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.

A miraculous visit to Machu Picchu

The first issue of Stopinder: A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time appeared in the year 2000. […]

After a three-month stint in the Bay Area, during which time I smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot of beer, and sat a total of twice at San Francisco Zen Center, I returned to Koko An in early October 1971 in order to participate in a seven-day sesshi […]

These are challenging times for all of us. We at Parabola are offering a free PDF of our “The Search for Meaning” issue from Spring 2017 to anyone who would like one, and we hope you will find comfort in its pages. Click here to access your free PDF. You can also purchase a print…

A Sufi king seeks a ring of great power.

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.

Photograph: Girls exploring rock pools, Cameron Bay by State Library of Victoria Collections, 1909 “Religion isn’t for me,” announced my eight-year-old daughter, Alexandra, as we ate dinner together one January night. “I think of it like an old spider on the wall. I know that it’s there but I try to…

A conversation with Kabbalah expert Rabbi Dr. Raphael Shuchat

Part of an Ancient Story: A Conversation with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

America’s children are being robbed of their childhood. It’s as simple as that.

Researches into the source of megalithic culture.

A classic quest seen anew

I have a suitcase
Packed with many things. …

What happened at the Hopi Corn Dance

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

The greatest shocks can inspire the deepest wisdom

Kuzunoha is a popular figure in Japanese folklore

How the Golden Rule can be the Golden Path

A haunted inn inspires deeper questions

A Report on the 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves….” As he lay dying, the Buddha gave this advice to his beloved cousin and disciple Ananda. I thought of it as I stood in a security line in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, just after a male security guard gestured for me to…

To meet her destiny, she needed a miracle

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

New York City At Night, ca. 1935 from Wikimedia Head down, hugging a grocery bag, I hurried past gutted buildings and empty lots, back to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. It seemed like a good idea at some point, having dinner together as friends. But the little Spanish market on…

When we least expect it, someone may walk up to us on the street and hand us a golden ticket.

“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.

In the Summer of 1987, Parabola sat down for an exchange with Marion Woodman on the subject of addiction.

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the current issue of PARABOLA: The Wild.

The calligraphy and paintings of the martial arts masters

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 […]

Among fields of lavender, understanding comes

In my mid-thirties I found myself in Dante’s dark wood, where my way was entirely lost.  My marriage was falling apart.  My primary mentor, Reynolds Price, seemed to be dying of a weird spinal cancer that was slowly paralyzing him.  My visits to him brought up visits I’d paid to my father in the hospital…

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

The student of seeing has to unlock the mystery first, Eckhart tells us, and it begins—here, now—with the question of who is seeing.

Beautiful, mysterious, deadly: mermaids of Russian folklore

More than three-quarters of the way through this extraordinary biography (though that label barely captures this book’s breadth and richness) of the scholar of religion Huston Smith …

The miracle is that the practice of presence not only enlivens ourselves, but allows us to share that new life with others and also to receive the presence of the Divine. It is the foundation for truth, and it is the genesis of hope. With practice, presence can, in the words of John G. Bennett,…

What our arboreal friends can teach us

Roland W. Reed, Alone With the Past, The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed, Afton, MN: Afton Press. In terms of interconnections, a dominant theme in all Native American cultures is that of relationship, or a series of relationships that are always reaching further and further out; relationships within…

Yeshua said: Whoever lives the interpretation of these words shall no longer taste death.

The Nobel winner with his muses

Kneading bread, baking a soul

Invaluable advice on cutting the apron strings

A conversation with Italian priest and spiritual guide Father Guidalberto Bormolini

Encountering eternity in the treasures of Egypt

Connecting with the cosmic through the grace, hardship, and gifts of a garden.

Frederick Law Olmsted’s village in the woods

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…

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

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…

Advice and exercises from a Qigong master

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s
palms, no more,
No other picture. […]

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.…

A faithful companion

Oxford skyline. Photo by David Iliff During the hectic middle decades of the twentieth century, from the end of the Great Depression through World War II and into the 1950s, a small circle of intellectuals gathered on a weekly basis in and around Oxford University to drink, smoke, quip, cavil, read…

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.

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

Finding the true king in his cage

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

James Whitlow Delano has lived in Asia for 17 years. His work has been awarded internationally: the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and Life Magazine), Leica’s Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International, Photo District News and others. His Scorched Earth: China’s Wounded Environment was awarded 1st place in the…

A life-changing encounter with spiritual authority

cultivation of the integrity and soundness of body, mind, soul, and spirit in the ancient Mediterranean world

A Trappist monk’s sojourn at Thomas Merton’s hermitage

I was determined not to let dialysis take over my life. But it already had. […]

The structure of traditional art

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

A transformative discovery lights the way

Walking in the footsteps of the first Buddhist women

The spiritual awakening of a world-class drunk

The Sufi master on meeting the inner and outer challenges of our time

What we need is right at hand

Shamanic memories from an Indian visionary

Bonding among the Juggalos

Welcoming the end of the journey

Anonymous / Aboriginal

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 …