Archive

In the Middle Ages people were well aware of the inexhaustible power that arises simply from sitting still. After that time, knowledge of the purifying power of stillness and its practice was, in the West, largely lost.

The fluidity of who and what we are reflected in embodied transformation

Announcing the publication of Senior Editor, Lee van Laer’s new book on symbolism in the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch. […]

Life lessons from William Segal

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…

How the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca created a fiesta of music.

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

Remembering the beloved poet

A fisherman, a celestial maiden: a fateful decision

“For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward…

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

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

As my prayer become more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent. […]

Lynda A. Archer

The way in, the way out

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

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

A guide to exploring, inner and outer

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.

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

The trouble with goats

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

To learn is to be vulnerable. It is to have the courage to say, “I don’t know” and the wisdom to know the difference between knowing and not knowing.

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…

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…

A child visits her ancestral land

What is the weight of wealth? Is it the weight of the money itself or is it the weight of responsibility of having that money?

A review of “George Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia” by Jeff Zaleski

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…

I would first and foremost like to follow an age-old injunction that every writer, before giving out any advice or critique to anyone else, should obligingly give an honest account of their journey. So before doing an appraisal of the 27th All & Everything International Humanities Conference I offer a short yet pertinent brief. Having…

Owen Barfield and the history of consciousness

“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.”

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

Anonymous / Aboriginal

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell reflects on the spiritual value of education in this new episode of Parabola’s free monthly podcast.

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

The calligraphy and paintings of the martial arts masters

A conversation with Italian priest and spiritual guide Father Guidalberto Bormolini

I follow two rules. The first is that my presence is invisible and silent. The film belongs to the storytellers. The second is to do as much research as possible, trust the material, and never film re-creations.

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

One August day recently in northern California, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee sat down with Parabola to speak about free will and destiny.

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

In the early 1980s, jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane devoted herself to the Hindu tradition, adopting the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda and established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside Los Angeles.

“The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation” by Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell. Reviewed by Patty de Llosa

What we need is right at hand

Meeting a horse to find peace, war, and the sea

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

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

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…

The word [struggle] is of unknown origin; and although it is presumed to have come from Scandinavian and Germanic roots (there are no clear parallels or roots in Latin) the connections are uncertain […]

learning mindfulness and connection from a dog named George Lucas

A conversation with spiritual pioneer Ram Dass

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? …

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

How can religious tradition be literally true when language is symbolic, intrinsically?

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 […]

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….

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

A classic quest seen anew

A Sufi master on finding balance in an unstable world

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.

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,…

I have a suitcase
Packed with many things. …

Guidance for our time from three wise men

Mindfulness and the roots of war

What happened at the Hopi Corn Dance

Inside an Ayahuasca ceremony

A human, an orangutan, a heart-to-heart communion

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

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

Anonymous / African

Retold by Nartana Premachandra

A conversation with civic visionary Jonathan F.P. Rose

A life-changing encounter with spiritual authority

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

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…

Newton’s inward search for hidden truth

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

A hopeful report from the 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions

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.

Lee van Laer, Red-Tailed Hawk, Piermont, NY Like the rest of the Parabola readership, I’ve been watching the developments on the borders of Europe — the influx of desperate refugees, the corpses of children — in a mixture of astonishment and horror. We live in what we believe to be an…

A conversation with intuitive and healer Laura Day Ivisited Laura Day in her apartment in Tribeca in lower Manhattan to talk about intuition. Since her early twenties, Day has been internationally famous for her uncanny ability to know things immediately, without the aid of research or reasoning, accurately seeing the outcome of even arcane events….

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

Sick of what it is called
Sick of the names
I dedicate every pore
To what’s here.
—Ikkyu

“The Eternal Law: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Modern Physics and Ultimate Reality” by John Spencer. Reviewed by Ocean Malandra.

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…

Lucifer is the most compelling character in Milton’s Paradise Lost. He is the most dazzling angel. In Hebrew his name means “to shine” or “to bear light.” In Latin it means “morning star.” […]

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

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

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

Advice and exercises from a Qigong master

ilustraciones de Jean Zaleski Era un lluvioso y helado atardecer de diciembre en Manhattan unos días antes de Navidad. Esperaba bajo una llovizna persistente el autobús de la Sexta Avenida para que nos llevara a mi y a mis cuatro hijos desde Greenwich hacia el norte de la ciudad hasta nuestro…

The hidden teachings of a beloved fairy tale

Betsy Cornwell shares Josh Boettiger’s essay on King David and Leonard Cohen, “The Poet and the Shepherd,” and Susan McCaslin’s meditation on spiritual journeys, “Guidance,” in this episode.

Anonymous / Jewish Retold by Maia Zelkha

Walking with an Inkling or two

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

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…

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

The long encounter of Thomas Merton and his Abbott, James Fox.