Archive

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 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.

Four statements to transform your life

A miracle made of wood

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

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares PL Travers’ stunning essay “Walking the Maze” and William Segal’s wise poem “The Middle Ground” in this episode of Parabola Magazine’s free podcast.

A faithful companion

Virgin and Child in Majesty, 1150–1200, Made in Auvergne, Walnut with paint, gesso, and linen Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where…

An older Navajo runs for his people

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.

Making the world her own

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….

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

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

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

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

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…

There are different kinds of realizations. They are not always lightening bolts but sometimes soft and slow, as if snow were quietly falling and settling.

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

The special power of classic films

The fiery path from light to light

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

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.

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.

A conversation with visionary philanthropist Nipun Mehta

A visitation in the night

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.

In a world on fire, finding the light that guides

“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. […]

The greatest shocks can inspire the deepest wisdom

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

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

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.

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…

A conversation with deep psychologist Michael Penn

The structure of traditional art

Bön monks flee the invaders of Tibet

Inside an Ayahuasca ceremony

In the beautiful woods of Newtown, Connecticut, a new elementary school is about to open. Pleasing to the eye and soul, this new school replaces the Sandy Hook Elementary School in which, on December 14, 2012, twenty young children and six adults were shot and killed […]

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

Travers in the role of Titania in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, c. 1924 (Wikipedia) It is not ignorance. Rather, one could say, a particular process of cognition that has little or no use for words. It is part of our heritage at birth, the infant’s first primer. And the…

Naming Rumpelstiltskin, and the path to self-knowledge

A journalist and a monk exchange revelatory letters

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

Mark Nepo on welcoming the life-force.

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…

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. […]

The acclaimed actor, now Zen teacher, remembers

Beautiful, mysterious, deadly: mermaids of Russian folklore

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.

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

They say the legendary hitter Ted Williams could see the seams of the ball as it came out of the pitcher’s hand. …

A visit to Havana, a priceless discovery

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. …

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 […]

Ever since human beings discovered that we live in an expanding, evolutionary universe with billions of other galaxies, it has become increasingly fashionable to suggest that human existence is essentially meaningless …

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares Ursula K. Le Guin’s “A Parabola Bestiary: Bear” and Eleanor O’Hanlon’s “Remarkable Beings” in this episode of Parabola magazine’s free monthly podcast

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s
palms, no more,
No other picture. […]

The spiritual awakening of a world-class drunk

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. […]

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

A great teacher meets his ultimate challenge

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

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

A rapturous elegy to love

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

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

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

Come join the circle of we who pray

A universe of meaning in a small Parisian abode

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.

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

Cooking for the sage king

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 spiritual master on what it takes

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

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

Learning to love winter’s night

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.”

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.”

A remarkable gallery of Heart Sutra Art

Betsy Cornwell shares Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush’s “Going Home” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Our Journey Had Advanced” in this episode of our free monthly podcast.

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.

Roland W. Reed, Alone With the Past, The Life and Photographic Art of Roland W. Reed, Afton, MN: Afton Press. In terms of interconnections, a dominant theme in all Native American cultures is that of relationship, or a series of relationships that are always reaching further and further out; relationships within…

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…

A Sufi king seeks a ring of great power.

Guidance for our time from three wise men

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

What the bees—and the Bushmen—know

Listening to the Yao

In February 2003, I went to Laura Rothenberg’s apartment to talk about her book, “Breathing for a Living,” which she wouldn’t live to see published. Laura was dying at age twenty-two. …

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

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;…

Verity climbed down from the scaffold and stood with me, looking up at his work. I murmured something about how otherworldly the statue looked. “I look for something other when I carve them,” he said. “They’re not connected to this world. They’re in another place, in their heavenly robes.” I was wearing the clothes of…

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

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

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. […]

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

Are we the generation that will lose the Earth?