OBSTACLES
VOLUME 5 NUMBER 3
Fall 1980

Obstacles. We spend our lives fighting them, overcoming them, getting around them, or making excuses for being stopped by them. How much of all this energy is spent tilting at windmills? Something, certainly, stops us from attaining what we wish and being what we could be; but is it what--or where--we think it is? Opposition and challenge from the outside evidently stimulate us to do battle, exercise and train us, develop our muscles and our patience. They play Marpa to our Milarepa, if there is any Milarepa in us at all. They help rather than hinder. But there is something inside everyone that resists help--a coward shadow that dogs the heels of our potential hero. This is the real obstacle, and it is very close to home; we have met the enemy, as Pogo says, and he is us. --from the editorial Focus

ARTICLES
MIZ CHAPMAN TELLS US THE SCORE: A MEMOIR, 1947 Al Young
Starting out black in America.

THE GARDEN David Malouf
A poem.

BLINDNESS, A NEW SEEING OF THE WORLD Jacques Lusseyran
Perception without eyes.

INNER GRACE Abraham Menashe
A photographic essay.

PATHS OF OBEDIENCE: FAIRY TALES AND THE MONK'S WAY Brother David Steindl-Rast
The Anima in Snow White, Psyche, and the novice.

THE GREAT TRANSITION Jonathan Omer-Man
A contemporary Jew seeks his faith.

AN EARTHQUAKE COMING: Interview at Akwesasne
Mohawk Longhouse chiefs show us the facts.

ARCS: WITH CROOKED GLANCES YOU TEACH ME

SALVAGING THE MYSTERY Italo Calvino
The unsuspected wonder and reality of Italian folktales.

CHANGING THE IMPOSSIBLE H.H. the Dalai Lama
On the use of difficulty.

PLAYING WITH ONE FOOT IN EACH CAMP Rob Baker
Peter Brook's theater of obstacles.

FOOTNOTE TO THE GURDJIEFF LITERATURE M. de Salzmann
A leader of the Gurdjieff work sifts the wheat from the chaff.

SOMETHING RELIABLE Roger Lipsey
The Picasso Retrospective.

BROKEN STRINGS Buddhist
Retold by Laura Simms

THE RAVEN European
Retold by D. M. Dooling

MILAREPA AND THE TRIAL OF THE TOWERS Tibetan
Retold by Paul Jordan-Smith

THE ROOTS OF PEACE Iroquois (Native American)