Archive

Tracy Cochran, “A Shared World”

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

Chatting with America’s favorite saint

The seasons and the Cosmos

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
—Wendell Berry

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…

One bright spring day, Parabola met with Karen Armstrong  in her suite at the Parker Meridian hotel in Manhattan.  The petite, friendly 62-year-old British ex-nun, arguably the most influential commentator on religion in the English-speaking world, was on tour to promote her latest bestselling book.  Lauded by critics as “magisterial” and “magnificent,” The Great Transformation…

The structure of traditional art

A stormy voyage into mystery and revelation

“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.”

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves….” As he lay dying, the Buddha gave this advice to his beloved cousin and disciple Ananda. I thought of it as I stood in a security line in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, just after a male security guard gestured for me to…

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

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…

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

An older Navajo runs for his people

“The Verses of the Theri Ambapali,” translated and retold with commentary by Margo McLoughlin

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…

Homespun advice to a young man in need

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.

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

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…

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

Researches into the source of megalithic culture.

A  Palestinian rapper and the music of hope

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

An encounter to last a lifetime

Exploring the “hidden face of God”

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

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…

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.

Previously unpublished commentary from Alan Watts, a pioneer of East-West spirituality.

Gitanjali Babbar wanted to walk to the Freedom Tower. This cold day in New York City marked the end of her first trip to the United States. …

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

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

Anonymous / African

Retold by Nartana Premachandra

Guidance for our time from three wise men

“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…

From slavery to the priesthood

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

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.

This song comes from a place where the angels are present, where light is born, where the future is written.

The science and spirit of awareness

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

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

Discovering the divine in her own backyard

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

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

The movement in my self from the mask to the face, from the personality to the person, from the performing actor to the ruler of the inner chamber, is the spiritual journey. […]

I was determined not to let dialysis take over my life. But it already had. […]

Was she “first among the apostles” of Jesus Christ?

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. …

Kneading bread, baking a soul

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

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

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.

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

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

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

Walking with an Inkling or two

The Desert Fathers and Mothers— and their culture of search

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall We sit on our heels on the tatami, the Japanese woman and myself, telling the stories of our lives. One can do this with a stranger. Too near, and the perspective is lost. Only the far can be near….

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.

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

BLACK ELK, LAKOTA VISIONARY: The Oglala Holy Man and Sioux Tradition. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

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

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

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….

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.

A young woman finds her way.

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

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

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

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

An interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai

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

Three Poems by Jane Yolen

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…

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

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.”

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

LETTERS FROM HELL by Valdemar Adolph Thisted. Preface by George MacDonald. Reviewed by Jan Cheripko

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. […]

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. […]

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….

Meeting death with dignity

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

In the darkness, the Buddha found light

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

Amma, 2009 The Hindu spiritual teacher known as Amma (“Mother”), or Mata Amritanandamayi, was born to a family of fishermen in southern India in 1953. Today she is popularly known as the “hugging saint” for her practice of embracing all who approach her as she gives darshan, or an “auspicious sight”…

The special power of classic films

Exploring yoga with the guru’s granddaughter

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

“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…

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

A story on homelessness, the deep woods, and wonder

A child visits her ancestral land

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

A report from the new Goddess Spirituality

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.”

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