Archive

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?

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

Four Sacred Guardians

Awakening to ourselves and the world

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

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

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.” […]

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

A conversation with civic visionary Jonathan F.P. Rose

A conversation with wildlife educator Steve Karlin

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

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. […]

A meditation teacher loses her voice—and finds her way

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.

Transforming repetition into renewal

Giving and receiving in a Bolivian marketplace

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.

The gift of fear and awe from a beast cold as the earth

In my mid-thirties I found myself in Dante’s dark wood, where my way was entirely lost.  My marriage was falling apart.  My primary mentor, Reynolds Price, seemed to be dying of a weird spinal cancer that was slowly paralyzing him.  My visits to him brought up visits I’d paid to my father in the hospital…

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

King David, Leonard Cohen and the Search for Meaning

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

ilustraciones de Jean Zaleski Era un lluvioso y helado atardecer de diciembre en Manhattan unos días antes de Navidad. Esperaba bajo una llovizna persistente el autobús de la Sexta Avenida para que nos llevara a mi y a mis cuatro hijos desde Greenwich hacia el norte de la ciudad hasta nuestro…

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

Many people may be surprised to learn that the surface of our brain is actually dark and that this darkness has consequences for our experience of consciousness and transformation itself, including our ultimate transformation at death. It also has consequences for the most subtle form of light we know, the light we associate with religious…

Impressions from the land of Rumi

There must be more to me than this. Have you ever thought this? It’s a little moment of awakening rather than an ordinary thought—a clearing in the clouds, a a distant memory, a knowing that there is more. More to life. More to me. This realization can feel like hitting bottom.

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

“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…

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. […]

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

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

Meeting death with dignity

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

I have a suitcase
Packed with many things. …

Four steps to take on the road of life

What the bees—and the Bushmen—know

Remembering the beloved poet

A  Palestinian rapper and the music of hope

A conversation with Frankl’s grandson and a Frankl family champion.

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. …

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

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

James George is a retired Canadian diplomat who served with distinction as High Commissioner to India, and Ambassador to Nepal and Iran. Chögyam Trungpa called him “a wise and benevolent man, an ideal statesman,” and the Dalai Lama refers to him as an “old friend.” He has known many important spiritual teachers of the twentieth…

Guidance for our time from three wise men

David Steindl-Rast (2004) Wikipedia The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a Benedictine monk. In the rule of St. Benedict, the momenta mori has always been important, because one of what St. Benedict calls…

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…

A visit with the famed nun and art historian

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

Walking with an Inkling or two

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

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. […]

Finding the true king in his cage

A conversation with intuitive and healer Laura Day Ivisited Laura Day in her apartment in Tribeca in lower Manhattan to talk about intuition. Since her early twenties, Day has been internationally famous for her uncanny ability to know things immediately, without the aid of research or reasoning, accurately seeing the outcome of even arcane events….

In the early 1980s, jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane devoted herself to the Hindu tradition, adopting the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda and established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside Los Angeles.

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.

Finding life between sand and sea

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

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

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

How the Golden Rule can be the Golden Path

The Desert Fathers and Mothers— and their culture of search

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

Going to the movies, mindfully

learning mindfulness and connection from a dog named George Lucas

This was the time in his life that Abd el-Kader had intended to devote to peaceful pursuits such as prayer, teaching, and charitable deeds. He might have turned his back on the growing tensions in Damascus: It would not have been unreasonable. Yet he could not escape the world around him, or the role that…

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…

Owen Barfield and the history of consciousness

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

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

Kneading bread, baking a soul

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.

A conversation with spiritual pioneer Ram Dass

Story editor Betsy Cornwell explores our current issue, Generosity and Service, in Parabola‘s monthly twenty-minute podcast.

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

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

A fresh look at “the mad monk”

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

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 Nobel winner with his muses

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

“All the world’s a stage.”

What we need is right at hand

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

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

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…

Cooking for the sage king

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;…

A report from the new Goddess Spirituality

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

Sound, scientific advice on attaining happiness

A visitation in the night

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.”

Opening ceremonies, Cherokee pow-wow, North Carolina, 2011 Reading about Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and countless other Indian tribal elders and chiefs made me regret that I would never know them. They had vanished and with them a way of relating to others we can call emotional intelligence. Not the intelligence…

Paul Reps (1895–1990) was an American artist, poet, and author best known for his pioneering book that helped introduce Zen to the West, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Parabola is honored to have the opportunity to […]

JFK, Ram Dass, and the mystery of Being

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

The simplest and hardest thing to do each day is to be here–fully, completely, without turning away.