Parabola's Spring 1997 issue:
Ways of Knowing Preserved in the sacred texts of great traditions are hints of a hidden knowledge. Secreted in a mystery safe from the literalism of the intellect, a living intelligence beckons us to let go of the hard and fast distinctions that limit the understanding of ourselves. Under its benevolent influence, thought rejoins a more organic perception, and we move along a "way" toward a knowing that no longer fragments our being. The blind alleys and dead-ends of ourmental world open onto a many-dimensioned cosmos, and we cease to be separate from the knowledge we yearn for. --from the editorial Focus
Cover: "Mantiq-al-Tair" ("The Concourse of the Birds") Manuscript painting by Habib Allah, late sixteenth century/early seventeenth century, Iran. Courtesty of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
In this issue:
- "Schooling Our Intelligence" by Thomas Moore - To meet the lesson of immediacy
- "Eating the Salmon of Wisdom" by Mara Freeman - Living the Celtic vision of nature
- "A Day in the Life of Krishna" by Margaret Case - Ritual performance as the play of the divine
- "Knowing Beyond Knowing" by Peter Kingsley - The Hermetic guide of contradiction
- "Listening Days" by Terry Tempest Williams - Silence at life's end
- "A Mapmaker's Dream" by James Cowan - A fictional account of a cartographer's vision
- "The Heart of Man and the Heart of Christianity" by Peter A. Kwasniewski - Passion as a unifying force
- "The Vow to Do No Harm: Text and Images from the Jain Tradition"
- "The Awakening of Primal Knowledge" by Ashok K. Gangadean - How the traditions point beyond the ego
- "At the Center" by Eliezer Shore - Beyond human knowledge in Maimonides
- "Living by Wonder" by Richard Lewis - When the doors of perception are cleansed
- "Wordgates" by J. L. Walker - Calligraphy framing a Chinese doorway
- "Just the Mind at Work" by Roger Lipsey - Looking at how thought functions
- "Splendid Is Your Ignorance" - A selection of Zen koans
Tangents - Reviews
- "Tangible Visions" by Marvin Barrett - Allen Wardwell's book on Northwest Indians
Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world
- "Hide and Seek" / Turkish - retold by Laura Simms
- "The Man Who Knew Everything" / Iranian - retold by Aaron Shepard
- "The Hour of Death" / Islamic - retold by Shawkat M. Toorawa
- "Hailibu the Hunter" / Mongolian - translated by John Minford