Archive

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…

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

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…

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

Encountering Henrietta Lannes

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

She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see. […]

A podcast from Parabola Editor, Tracy Cochran’s mindfulness meditation talk at the Rubin Museum of Art on January 6th, 2016.

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

A recollection of the first moment of being at one.

In Vesali, in ancient India, at the time of the Buddha, a baby girl was born spontaneously at the foot of a mango tree in the royal garden. She was given the name Ambapali.

Parabola’s first issue, Winter 1976, included the magazine’s first interview. Conducted by then-editor John Loudon, it questioned religion scholar Huston Smith, author of the bestseller The Religions of Man, whom Loudon described as “a man who has traveled widely, but deeply, learning the many languages for what is primordially true.”

In the old days, no one ever stole. Those who were well off always shared what they had. […]

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

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. […]

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. […]

Rare wisdom on “how to see.”

The hidden teachings of a beloved fairy tale

How the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca created a fiesta of music.

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

As contemporary life becomes more and more fragmented and unsustainable, many individuals are left perplexed and searching for more complete and sustainable models to understand themselves and their place in the world around them. […]

“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 story on homelessness, the deep woods, and wonder

Invaluable advice on cutting the apron strings

A spiritual master on what it takes

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall We sit on our heels on the tatami, the Japanese woman and myself, telling the stories of our lives. One can do this with a stranger. Too near, and the perspective is lost. Only the far can be near….

What we need is right at hand

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. …

The essence of African religion

Life lessons from the Bhagavad Gita

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…

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

Mike Licht, Cydippe with Acontius’s Apple iPhone, after Paulus Bor The toy company Mattel has announced the release in Fall 2015 of “Hello Barbie,” the first Barbie doll to feature artificial intelligence. Through the toy’s wireless transmission of a child’s voice (“Hello, Barbie!”) to offsite computers, which will wire back a…

Anonymous / African

Retold by Nartana Premachandra

A transformative discovery lights the way

The special power of classic films

A trail toward a Golden Rule, a Land Ethic, and real magic

David Steindl-Rast (2004) Wikipedia 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 mori has always been important, because one of what St. Benedict calls…

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.

A classic quest seen anew

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is the foundational and earliest text on yoga. Dating from about the fifth century BCE, it reflects an oral tradition in existence long before.

I don’t know why I was born | with this belief in something | deeper and larger than we can | see. […]

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

A passionate prayer for what is lost and what is found

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. […]

An interview with Keith Buzzell

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…

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 remarkable gallery of Heart Sutra Art

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

Giving and receiving in a Bolivian marketplace

Mark Nepo on welcoming the life-force.

Indigo Animal is original, delightful, and profound. The artist, Rue Harrison, has given us wonderful characters in illustrated books in which she has raised the bar on a certain kind of content. […]

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from Parabola Magazine’s new issue, “The Miraculous,” including three new poems by beloved author Jane Yolen.

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.

Helen Berger, “A Shift in Vision”

The legendary director meets Carlos Castaneda

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the Spring 2021 issue of Parabola, Wellness, including an exploration of the world’s healing water goddesses and a practical guide to awakening awareness. Your thoughts about yourself, experiences, and perceptions continually arise and change, come and go, but awareness remains. Don’t try to grasp or understand awareness; notice…

Odilon Redon, Flower Clouds, 1903 The root meaning of heal is whole. Illness and mishap and even great tragedy can lead us eventually from the pain of isolation to a greater wholeness. There is such a powerful tendency in our spiritual aspiration to climb up out of the mess of our…

Seeing the light when it is darkest

A rapturous elegy to love

A haunted inn inspires deeper questions

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

A conversation with Italian priest and spiritual guide Father Guidalberto Bormolini

How, indeed, could it be possible for a man, who is limited on six sides—by east, west, south, north, deep, and sky—to understand a matter which is above the skies, which is beneath the deep, which stretches beyond north and south, and which is present in every place, and fills all vacuity? —St. Gregory the…

On true seeing

A fresh look at “the mad monk”

How do you get people to trust life? You have to trick them. They won’t jump into the water, so you have to throw them in.Alan Watts, “How to Reach Where You Already Are” Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from Parabola Magazine’s “The Search for Meaning” issue, which is available as a free PDF…

Vincent Van Gogh, The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888, oil, on canvas (Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)One morning last October, I experienced a moment of grace. It happened as I was walking my black Labrador retriever, Shadow, on one of those warm autumn days when everything looks edged in gold….

A conversation with wildlife photographer, author, and conservationist Staffan Widstrand

What that means and how that feels

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

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,…

The Very Rev. James Parks Morton (1930-2020). Photo: stjohndivine.org Parabola regrets the passing of James Parks Morton. He served for many years on the Board of the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition, which publishes the magazine, and so was a great friend to us as well as to the…

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

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

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? …

The trouble with goats

Xharije’s wedding, 1970 “Who you marry and when you die was written on your forehead the day you were born,” my mother told me when I was young. I was relieved. It was lucky that God, the Infinite, the All Powerful had things under control. They were much  too important to…

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.

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…

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…

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

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…

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…

“We shall not cease from exploration,” wrote the Catholic poet T.S. Eliot. “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Fertility, birth and death, ferocity, protection, sexuality: all of these are surely aspects of the goddess, and not mutually exclusive of each other.

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.

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. …

Learning to love winter’s night

Anonymous, “Nomad Girl” retold by Barbara H. Berger

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…

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….

Little Gidding has been described as a “thin place” where there is only a slim veil between time and eternity.

Imagination itself may be our best resource for experiential recovery of a vibrant, participatory, and wildly sacred Earth.

Paying respects