Archive

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

How the First People learned to cry.

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.

Forgiveness in the work of Martin Scorsese

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

In the darkness, the Buddha found light

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 …

Cinderella slaves for years for her heartless stepfamily; Beauty offers her life to the Beast at her father’s request. […]

The extraordinary inner life of a great public figure.

Jacob Needleman’s voice has been prominent in the conversation about man’s inner possibilities for some forty years.

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

Sound, scientific advice on attaining happiness

Remembering the sacred mother animal

cultivation of the integrity and soundness of body, mind, soul, and spirit in the ancient Mediterranean world

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

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

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

Photograph by Lee van Laer Human  beings are peculiar creatures. We can think; and it sets us apart from other creatures, who can think some (consider the honeybee) but not much. Thinking, over the last 10,000 or so years (a rough estimate,) mankind has occupied himself, in the disciplines of science…

Finding the true king in his cage

“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…

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…

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

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

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…

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

To cherish the divine spark

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.

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

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

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. […]

Hammarskjöld, Havel, Mandela, Thunberg

“Often I have come across stern pronouncements directed at people like me: One cannot dabble, say the priests and scholars. Spirituality is not a tasting menu. “New Agers” who borrow a bit of this religion and a bit of that, while discarding the parts they don’t like, will never have anything but a shallow and…

An anonymous Hindu tale retold by Rama Devagupta.

A child visits her ancestral land

How the Golden Rule can be the Golden Path

Llewellyn-Vaughan-Lee photographed by Richard Whittaker One August day recently in Northern California, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee sat down with Parabola in to speak about free will and destiny.  The English-born Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi mystic and lineage holder in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Sitting in…

Expressing our essential self

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.” […]

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

A conversation with educator and spiritual leader John Malloy …

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.

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

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

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 conversation with wildlife educator Steve Karlin

Fire Creates. Fire Cooks. Fire Kills. Fire also kisses. It kisses death from life and life from death.

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

A stormy voyage into mystery and revelation

The student of seeing has to unlock the mystery first, Eckhart tells us, and it begins—here, now—with the question of who is seeing.

Impressions from the land of Rumi

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

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

Tasting the forbidden fruit

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

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. […]

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

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

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 […]

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

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

Rare wisdom on “how to see.”

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

King Salomon seeks paradise with the help of an eagle

Waken, Wala!
Wala! Awake!
From thy long sleep,
Slumberer, wake at my call! […]

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

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…

An interview with Keith Buzzell

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

The way in, the way out

A Sufi king seeks a ring of great power.

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. […]

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

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…

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

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

Exploring yoga with the guru’s granddaughter

Come join the circle of we who pray

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

An interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai

The seasons and the Cosmos

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….

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…

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

Listening to the Yao

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.

Each summer I teach creative writing classes at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It’s a wonderful job for many reasons: my colleagues are uniformly, eccentrically brilliant, I’ve taught at campuses all over the country, from Los Angeles to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and since the program is a sleepaway camp, the mood is…

The trouble with goats

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….

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

Listening for an answer beyond words

Newton’s inward search for hidden truth

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

What happened at the Hopi Corn Dance

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…

“Today we have gathered and see that the cycles of life continue.”

An encounter to last a lifetime

Mullah Nasr Eddin, or Hodja Nasr Eddin, is a legendary Turkish teller of tales, a sort of wise fool, to whom all sorts of exploits are attributed.

The science and spirit of awareness

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