Archive

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.

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

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

Joshua Boettiger, “Alone, with Others”

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…

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

Anonymous / Jewish Retold by Maia Zelkha

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

Mindfulness and the roots of war

Exploring yoga with the guru’s granddaughter

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

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

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

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

The seasons and the Cosmos

“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…

Intelligence is a quality available to choose, as a function of mind that can live itself through us. In this article, I will focus on spiritual intelligence as understood within the Western Monotheistic traditions. Here we will explore five forms of intelligence:  1) moral, 2) analogical, 3) intuitive, 4) imaginal, 5) esoteric. Before proceeding, a…

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

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

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?

An interview with Keith Buzzell

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

A lyrical song of love, nature, the sacred

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….

The greatest shocks can inspire the deepest wisdom

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

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

The filmmaker writes about forgiveness and acceptance

Making the world her own

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. […]

This episode shares excerpts from Parabola‘s current issue, “Mercy and Forgiveness.”

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

Born in India in 1918, B.K.S. Iyengar has been teaching yoga since the age of seventeen. An innovative and exacting teacher for more than sixty years, he has guided the establishment of many centers of Iyengar Yoga worldwide. His message is “Yoga is for everyone.”

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…

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. […]

“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.

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

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

The Golden Rule Tetraflexagon is a magic device created by Steffan Soule in order to teach the Golden Rule.

Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, with Peggy Bagley, “Spiritual Laws: The Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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…

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.

Download a free PDF of a new rendering by Thomas Powers of “Consolation of Philosophy” (c. 524 A.D.), the classic and influential work by the Roman senator Boethius (c. 477-524 A.D.).

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. […]

learning mindfulness and connection from a dog named George Lucas

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

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

To meet her destiny, she needed a miracle

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

Snow White. Heinrich Leutemann or Carl Offterdinger, late nineteenth century When I was three or four years old, I started to grow afraid that I was evil. That year I had the worst nightmare of my life thus far: intense, consuming, and hyper real in the way that only very young children’s nightmares…

Anonymous / African

Retold by Nartana Premachandra

Life lessons from William Segal

The trouble with goats

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

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

Elie Wiesel died Saturday, July 2, 2016 at his home in Manhattan. The Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner was 87. In May of 1985, we interviewed Elie Wiesel for our “Exile” Issue.

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

Searching for symbol in a world of number

Understanding mercy as a force from on High

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Margaret Delaney’s “The Anonymous Ones” and “Gastronomy in Ancient China” by Donald Haper in the latest episode of our free monthly podcast.

A tale of snake handlers, faith healers, and speakers in tongues.

A visit with the famed nun and art historian

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…

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

Story editor Betsy Cornwell and Parabola intern Surnaí Molloy read excerpts from the Summer 2021 issue, Young & Old, in this episode of our free podcast.

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.

Searching for her place in God’s house

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

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;…

Kneading bread, baking a soul

Researches into the source of megalithic culture.

That a book on the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt has been favorably reviewed by the New Yorker is surely a sign of a significant cultural shift, but if you take the time to read this extraordinary book you will quickly see why. […]

King David, Leonard Cohen and the Search for Meaning

A rapturous elegy to love

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

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.

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…

What the bees—and the Bushmen—know

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, “Ways of Healing,” in PARABOLA Magazine’s podcast. Learn more about this issue or become a subscriber at parabola.org. This episode also includes Kenneth Lawrence’s retelling of the Japanese tale “Kiyotsune.” Please consider supporting this podcast and Parabola Magazine by purchasing a back issue or becoming a subscriber. This…

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

A transformative discovery lights the way

The Descent offers a chance to look clearly at tired habits of thought and action. A woman may finally admit to an addiction or see how some long-denied pattern of action has failed her time and again. The Return offers a chance for something to be born or recovered. A woman may reclaim a talent…

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

A Sufi master looks at—and beyond—the approaching flames

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

Giving and receiving in a Bolivian marketplace

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

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.

Every word I pick here | Is the wrong one, one | I’ve used too often, | Touched by thought | Until it’s worn and tired.

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

Transforming repetition into renewal

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

Among fields of lavender, understanding comes

An Interview with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from November 4, 2006 until November 1, 2015.

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

Part of an Ancient Story: A Conversation with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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.

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides