Archive

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?

Kneading bread, baking a soul

Making the world her own

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

Vincent Van Gogh, Pietà (after Eugène Delacroix). 1889. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam As the following passage begins, Jesus of Nazareth, here called Yeshua, is suffering on the cross, attended by several including his mother, Mary, here known as Maryam, and Elizabeth, cousin to Maryam and mother of John the Baptist. It is Elizabeth who narrates. —The…

How the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca created a fiesta of music.

To meet her destiny, she needed a miracle

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 […]

Es difícil para la mayoría de nosotros creer que ambos ángeles y demonios se mezclan con los humanos en la Tierra […]

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, The Prado, Madrid I think we tend to create inward forms of our own — adopted, that is, from things we encounter outwardly — and then stalk each other with them. This process is writ large on the social and political landscape;…

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

A visitation in the night

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…

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

A guided meditation on being gentle with yourself when things are hard, with Parabola’s editorial director Tracy Cochran. To support Parabola’s mission, please consider donating. 

A report from the new Goddess Spirituality

Brian first studied the history of photography and Black & White printing in 1985 with Teacher and Mentor William Abranowicz at Parsons New York City. …

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 […]

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

Giving and receiving in a Bolivian marketplace

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.

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

A life-changing encounter with spiritual authority

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 conversation with civic visionary Jonathan F.P. Rose

Tracking J.R.R. Tolkien’s Keeper of the Forest

There is a middle ground, a basic Reality embracing self and Self. It may be called my true nature. To discover what
prevents me from the experience of it, I have only to look at myself, just as I am. […]

A remarkable gallery of Heart Sutra Art

“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.”

A rapturous elegy to love

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

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 science and spirit of awareness

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

Recollected talks of Michel de Salzmann at Chandolin

Joshua Boettiger, “Alone, with Others”

Exploring yoga with the guru’s granddaughter

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. […]

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.

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

A Sufi master on finding balance in an unstable world

A transformative discovery lights the way

In his book All and Everything, G.I. Gurdjieff presented what he called the “Obligolnian Strivings,” directives intended to instill in the consciousness of those who practice them—said to be engaged in the “Work”—the “divine function of genuine Conscience.”

When most of us think of determination, we think first of imposing our will on the world, insisting on a particular outcome, our vision. Yet real determination appears when we keep going, surrendering what the ego wants, which is always to look good, to sound good, to win. Real perseverance is willingness, not will. […]

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

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

Transforming repetition into renewal

Memorable encounters with an extraordinary being

Sleeping. Louis Sussman-Hellborn (1828–1908) I’ve had quite a tumultuous relationship with fairy tales. The Little Mermaid was always my favorite as a child. Not just the Disney version, where everyone lives happily-ever-after, but the original, where the mermaid feels like she’s walking on a thousand knives and almost stabs the prince to…

The fiery path from light to light

Bön monks flee the invaders of Tibet

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.

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from PARABOLA’s forty-three year archive on the theme of remembering.

Despite acclaim, even adulation, garnered from his theater and film work, including such classic films as The Holy Mountain and El Topo, the author found himself in a state of doubt—of spiritual questioning. …

One of some seven-hundred current members of Ready Willing & Able, the Doe Fund’s flagship training and sustaining organization, Joe will spend the next few months …

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

Photograph by Peter Cunningham The rain was coming down in sheets as I drove down a wooded road in rural Montague, Massachusetts, towards the opening ceremony of the Maezumi Institute, the new training center of the Zen Peacemakers Order. “The End” by the Doors was playing on the car stereo. “The…

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

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…

What the bees—and the Bushmen—know

Anonymous, “Krishna and Radha,” retold with commentary by Laura Simms

The Desert Fathers and Mothers— and their culture of search

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…

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head […]

Cooking for the sage king

The most powerful teachings and teachers are those that bring us back to ourselves, as we are now, helping us see our true nature: vulnerable and exposed, along with both our nascent strengths and formidable obstacles. […]

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. …

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

Impressions from the land of Rumi

A stormy voyage into mystery and revelation

What our arboreal friends can teach us

A young woman navigates the roads outside—and within

Why God is a verb, not a noun

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

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. […]

Hammarskjöld, Havel, Mandela, Thunberg

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

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

How can we find joy in this suffering world?

Tsunemasa, Attributed to Zeami Motokiyo / Japanese Noh. Retold by Kenneth E. Lawrence, translated by Edward Kai Lawrence. Art by Kumiko Lawrence

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

What we need is right at hand

Listening to the Yao

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

A child retells the legend of the Sumerian goddess Inanna and her descent to the Nether World.

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.

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…

When you accept the state of being a stranger, you are no longer a stranger. […]

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…

A child visits her ancestral land

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

Nassreddin Hodja was a real person, a Turkish Sufi, who died in the thirteenth century.

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…

The greatest shocks can inspire the deepest wisdom

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

By being born, we all find ourselves on a journey of some kind.

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

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…