Archive

A remarkable gallery of Heart Sutra Art

A fresh look at “the mad monk”

A classic quest seen anew

Seeing the light when it is darkest

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.

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 idea of a “fall of man” is not confined to Christendom. Krishnamurti in his famous dialogues with physicist David Bohm on “The Ending of Time” asked the question: What went wrong in human life? …

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. …

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

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…

Anonymous / Aboriginal

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.

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…

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 …

A remarkable man of old Afghanistan

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.

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….

How the goddess of creation became the goddess of death

Continuing Orthodox monasticism’s oldest unbroken tradition, Sinai monks still liturgize, shoeless, over the roots of the Burning Bush. On the holy ground where Moses was commanded to remove his sandals—together with all earthly logic—monks turn diversity’s polarizing forces to unity: some of the ways St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai (Egypt) brings Byzantium’s patristic spirit…

Forgiveness in the work of Martin Scorsese

A universe of meaning in a small Parisian abode

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.

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. […]

“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.”

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. …

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. […]

The trickster, the shape shifter, the god–the coyote

A conversation with spiritual pioneer Ram Dass

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…

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

The most powerful teachings and teachers are those that bring us back to ourselves, as we are now, helping us see our true nature: vulnerable and exposed, along with both our nascent strengths and formidable obstacles. […]

By being born, we all find ourselves on a journey of some kind.

A conversation with African healer and guide Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa

THE STILLNESS OF THE LIVING FOREST: A Year of Listening and Learning by John Harvey. Reviewed by Jan Cheripko

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

An anonymous Hindu tale retold by Rama Devagupta.

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

Story editor Betsy Cornwell shares excerpts from Parabola Magazine’s new issue, “The Miraculous,” including three new poems by beloved author Jane Yolen.

“GURDJIEFF RECONSIDERED: The Life, the Teachings, The Legacy” by Roger Lipsey. Reviewed by Jeff Zaleski

Joshua Boettiger, “Alone, with Others”

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.).

Indigo Animal is original, delightful, and profound. The artist, Rue Harrison, has given us wonderful characters in illustrated books in which she has raised the bar on a certain kind of content. […]

“We have been thrown into this world without knowing why or how. As people sometimes say, “I didn’t ask to be born.” And you didn’t (at least as far as you can remember). But you are here, and you have to deal with it.”

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…

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

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…

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….

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…

Nassreddin Hodja was a real person, a Turkish Sufi, who died in the thirteenth century.

Reaching an understanding that no storm can shake

Finding the true king in his cage

Life lessons from the Bhagavad Gita

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.

Despite a growing awareness of the Divine Feminine, women remain ineligible to head many major religious groups and institutions […]

On Adin Steinsaltz and the power of hope

A conversation with Brother Satyananda of Self-Realization Fellowship

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…

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

Going to the movies, mindfully

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

Guidance for our time from three wise men

The Nobel winner with his muses

I don’t know why I was born | with this belief in something | deeper and larger than we can | see. […]

A young woman finds her way.

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 fisherman, a celestial maiden: a fateful decision

Advice and exercises from a Qigong master

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

A conversation with educator and spiritual leader John Malloy …

How can we find joy in this suffering world?

A conversation with former prisoner and Buddhist practitioner Edwin Paragas

Remembering Harold Bloom and Jacob Needleman

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

Announcing the publication of Senior Editor, Lee van Laer’s new book on symbolism in the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch. […]

A rapturous elegy to love

A conversation with Mirabai Starr

An encounter to last a lifetime

From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind

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

“All the world’s a stage.”

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

A childhood memory leads to forgiveness and love

A  Palestinian rapper and the music of hope

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

I would first and foremost like to follow an age-old injunction that every writer, before giving out any advice or critique to anyone else, should obligingly give an honest account of their journey. So before doing an appraisal of the 27th All & Everything International Humanities Conference I offer a short yet pertinent brief. Having…

A haunted inn inspires deeper questions

“The Eternal Law: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Modern Physics and Ultimate Reality” by John Spencer. Reviewed by Ocean Malandra.

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….

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.

A leap of faith into an “intentional” community

An anonymous Buddhist tale translated from the Pali and retold by Margo McLoughlin

Are we the generation that will lose the Earth?

Life lessons from William Segal

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.

“SYMBOL OF DIVINE LIGHT: The Lamp in Islamic Culture and Other Traditions” by Nicholas Stone. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.

Inside an Ayahuasca ceremony

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

The greatest shocks can inspire the deepest wisdom

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…

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