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Odilon Redon, Buddha Walking Among the Flowers, 1905. “Most of us are like a fish caught in a hook. The Buddha is trying to reel us in; the hook holding us is our deep spiritual longing. We spend most of the time struggling, not wanting to be reeled in, not wanting…

Remembering the sacred mother animal

Memorable encounters with an extraordinary being

One Autumn day in 1976 a question appeared: if I took a photo of something I’d seen that touched my feelings, would the feeling return later when I looked at the print?

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…

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.

The essence of African religion

What our arboreal friends can teach us

The science and spirit of awareness

In contrast to our modern situation, traditional and indigenous peoples had extensive spiritually and communally based warrior medicine, practices and lineages. […]

The structure of traditional art

What makes the Wizard of Oz an iconic American tale that has entered into the language? Some expressions are so well known they need no further explanation, as for example “You’re not in Kansas anymore”.

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

The Tamils of Sri Lanka called him the Sage of Jaffna.

A rapturous elegy to love

The way in, the way out

Newton’s inward search for hidden truth

Of might and right, and the future of the world’s art

A visitation in the night

A faithful companion

A haunted inn inspires deeper questions

Beautiful, mysterious, deadly: mermaids of Russian folklore

Invaluable advice on cutting the apron strings

Reconnecting to the sacred, from a Sufi teacher

Silas Hagerty was a young filmmaker in his twenties when I met him at a Servicespace retreat. […]

A conversation with physicist Leo Piilonen

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

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

A vibrant meditation on Pietà, grief, and growth

“All the world’s a stage.”

Story editor Betsy Cornwell looks at our Summer 2014 Issue, EMBODIMENT, in Parabola Magazine’s monthly podcast.

To meet her destiny, she needed a miracle

I have a suitcase
Packed with many things. …

Are we the generation that will lose the Earth?

Love and compassion are qualities essential to our stature as true human beings, and jointly might be considered the capacities that most distinguish us from the animals, except that animals sometimes display more kindness towards one another—and towards people—than we do.

Tasting the forbidden fruit

Mindfulness and the roots of war

In mid-August 2015, Viral Mehta, a co-founder of ServiceSpace.org, was diagnosed with an acute form of bone marrow suppression. In the passages below, his wife, Pavithra. “Pavi” Mehta, offers an update on Viral’s condition and speaks with him about his challenges and recovery.

Within a Mayan burial cave, understanding comes

The Gurdjieff Foundation of Illinois has generously assembled a free searchable index for Parabola magazine readers.

A Sufi master on finding balance in an unstable world

A mother and daughter trace their roots to the Vikings—and to those they conquered

With a gaze of majestic power, the master electrified me with a glimpse of his cosmic consciousness.

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

Sage advice from a welcome voice

Expressing our essential self

Cooking for the sage king

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 journalist and a monk exchange revelatory letters

Kuzunoha is a popular figure in Japanese folklore

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. […]

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

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

Reflections on the 2020 All and Everything International Humanities Conference and beyond

Four statements to transform your life

This was the time in his life that Abd el-Kader had intended to devote to peaceful pursuits such as prayer, teaching, and charitable deeds. He might have turned his back on the growing tensions in Damascus: It would not have been unreasonable. Yet he could not escape the world around him, or the role that…

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…

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 […]

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 […]

The great saint follows her heart to the Divine

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
—Wendell Berry

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

A miracle made of wood

Long, long ago the Bodhisatta was born as a swan…

Understanding mercy as a force from on High

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

Bonfire, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” writes Emily Dickinson.  “The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs.” After a great shock or loss or change, a stillness comes. We sit still and receive life without leaning forward to grasp at it or commenting on it—think of the…

A young woman navigates the roads outside—and within

Come join the circle of we who pray

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…

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares essays from Parabola’s extensive archives on the theme of “Renewal” in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free podcast.

Like a phoenix among sparrows, Chinese civilization is resplendent in its longevity, myth and tradition. For much of its long history, Chinese emperors incorporated myth, folklore, and ideological concepts to legitimate their dynasties, to sanction their rule.

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

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

Diving into the well of creativity

Four role models for all who seek the sacred

There once lived, in Fanti-land, a man named Father Anansi. He possessed all the wisdom in the world. People came to him daily for advice and help.

There are different kinds of realizations. They are not always lightening bolts but sometimes soft and slow, as if snow were quietly falling and settling.

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. […]

Marion Woodman “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 and contains both. If these are projected onto the outside world, transcendence ceases to…

How can we find joy in this suffering world?

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…

Encountering eternity in the treasures of Egypt

Close encounters with a student of Gurdjieff

Tobias and the Angel, detail of painting by Raphael. National Gallery, London. From Peter Lamborn Wilson, Angels (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980). A Hebrew Myth, a potent element in the annals of the bees, tells us that when a child is born an angel takes it under his wing and recites…

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

King David, Leonard Cohen and the Search for Meaning

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.

On true seeing

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

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

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

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

A photographer envisions the sacred and the profane on a Hawaiian island

The simplest and hardest thing to do each day is to be here–fully, completely, without turning away.

From slavery to the priesthood

An anonymous Hindu tale retold by Rama Devagupta.