Archive

How deeply we fear being nobody. One way to think of the ego is as a defense against pain, particularly the pain of being no one.

“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.

Over 2,500 years ago, Peter Kingsley tells us, Parmenides and Empedocles laid the basic foundations for the world and culture we now live in.

Teresa of Avila—and grief—teach a mighty lesson

Meeting death with dignity

Many things in the Philokalia are said about “passions.” This word has not quite the same meaning as it has in ordinary language […]

Readers will find here an expertly assembled narrative—a chronological mosaic of the activities, inner and outer, of Gurdjieff and his followers, pieced together from the records kept by many. …

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.” […]

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

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.”

Hamada, Leach and Yanagi in the United States, probably Hawaii, in 1952 “The institution of Living National Treasures was started in the fifties–when Japan’s machine culture was preparing to overtake ours–barely a hundred years after the West had forced the opening up of its insular, agricultural society. The title “Living National…

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.

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. […]

An older Navajo runs for his people

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.

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.

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

Three Poems by Jane Yolen

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

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

A celebrated composer hears celestial music

A free PDF of our ALONE & TOGETHER issue from summer 2012 to read in these challenging times.

Mary Oliver was an astonishing poet beloved by many and also a frequent contributor to PARABOLA over the years.

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

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. […]

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

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

Listening to the Yao

Kuzunoha is a popular figure in Japanese folklore

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…

Exploring yoga with the guru’s granddaughter

Laozi, Investiture of the Gods at Ping Sien Si, Pasir Panjang, Perak, Malaysia Photograph from the Ping Sien Si Temple in Perak, Malaysia taken by Anandajoti. My father had many good qualities; unfortunately, equanimity was not one of them. Known for a ferociously bad temper, he once threatened a one-armed theater…

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 […]

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.

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

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…

THE BHAGAVAD GITA: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life by Ravi Ravindra. Reviewed by Vinita Kaushik Kapur.

“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.”

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…

The acclaimed actor, now Zen teacher, remembers

The language of life asks for our ears and calls for our souls.

Shamanic memories from an Indian visionary

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 African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

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.

learning mindfulness and connection from a dog named George Lucas

Recollected talks of Michel de Salzmann at Chandolin

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

“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.” —Basarab Nicolescu

I have a suitcase
Packed with many things. …

Parabola Magazine · Parabola Podcast Episode 47 The Golden Rule Story Editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the Winter 2021-2022 issue of Parabola, “The Golden Rule,” including this year’s grand prize winner of the Poetry of the Sacred contest from the Center for Interfaith Relations.

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 conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

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

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

“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.”

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…

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

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

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.

Institutions can give the money, but they don’t dispense the compassion. That’s up to us. We need, as individuals and as a society, to take a long hard look this question. We should begin now, because the question is being forced upon us with an urgency that will only become apparent later, after the excitement…

Life lessons from William Segal

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

The trickster, the shape shifter, the god–the coyote

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…

King Salomon seeks paradise with the help of an eagle

Whoever you are: in the evening step out | of your room, where you know everything …

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

“Give it one week of hard frost,” my new husband says, “and all the green will be gone.” He has slowed the car to let two adolescent does cross the road, and we watch them vanish neatly into the ditch on the other side. […]

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

Training the body, training the mind

Four role models for all who seek the sacred

Frederick Law Olmsted’s village in the woods

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….

Being “old” in Bali

A powerful remembrance of war and peace

Awakening to ourselves and the world

The hidden teachings of a beloved fairy tale

Guidance for our time from three wise men

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

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the current issue of Parabola, BALANCE.

Helen Berger, “A Shift in Vision”

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from the Fall 2021 issue of Parabola Magazine, Fire, including the lead essay by Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, “Fire Season.” Read the full issue by subscribing to Parabola. Parabola Magazine · Parabola Podcast Episode 50: Fire

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

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…

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

“We have been thrown into this world without knowing why or how. As people sometimes say, “I didn’t ask to be born.” And you didn’t (at least as far as you can remember). But you are here, and you have to deal with it.”

Among the tasks or “yogi jobs” a participant can volunteer for during silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, a Buddhist meditation center in rural Massachusetts, the most resonant in every sense is that of bell ringer.

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…

The seasons and the Cosmos

Giving and receiving in a Bolivian marketplace

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

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 …

Remembering the beloved poet

This episode of Parabola’s free monthly podcast includes an excerpt from David Ulrich’s Zen Camera on the joys of mindful photography and drawing, as well as Alexandra Haven’s essay on the wonders of ancient Egypt […]

A conversation with Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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…

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. […]

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

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