“Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.”
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS SUMMED UP the human condition with these words. While we can work to alleviate suffering, it cannot be erased. The body will decay, loved ones will depart, the known will dissolve into the unknown. We can give food to the starving, medicine to the sick, and solace to the lonely, but the world is wide and its agonies endless.
In this Spring 2011 issue of PARABOLA we endeavor to approach suffering by the illumination of the world’s great spiritual traditions, art, and literature. The issue opens with an essay by a Zen Buddhist priest from New York City, Robert Chodo Campbell, witnessing hard times in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and it concludes with a venerable painting embodying the Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions. In between flow an essay on how the great Catholic monk Thomas Merton viewed suffering, a report on the tribulations of the rain forest, an interview with esteemed teacher Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man, a gripping memoir of endurance by a polar explorer, and much more, including insights from Mme de Salzmann and Michel de Salzmann. Of particular interest to some readers and a surprise to many will be Neil Rusch’s essay on Jack Kerouac, his sufferings, and the esoteric, in which the “King of the Beats” encounters the teachings of P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff.
If one lesson is to be distilled from all this wisdom, perhaps it can be found in the three simple words that grace this issue’s Arcs: Let It Be. Within these pages, there is sage counsel on how to accept the suffering in our lives, and how to learn from it. There is also consideration of intentional suffering as a spiritual path.
Visual treasures too are to be found in this issue, which highlights the resonant art of photography. Words from the Dalai Lama are accompanied by rarely seen photographs from Herb Ritts, the Beatitudes of Jesus Christ face an image of a crucifix by the legendary Robert Mapplethorpe, and there are photographs from contemporary master Brian English.
We at PARABOLA hope you benefit from this issue. May your involuntary sufferings be slight, and the wisdom they impart abundant.
—JEFF ZALESKI
Table of Contents
ESSAYS AND CONVERSATIONS
Robert Chodo Campbell, Five Full Minutes: A Zen Buddhist priest in Zimbabwe and South Africa
Neil Rusch, For the Swing of Thought: Jack Kerouac goes in search of the miraculous
Accepting the Mystery: A conversation with Jonathan Omer-Man
To Be Free of Suffering: Wisdom from the Dalai Lama, with photographs by Herb Ritts
Jeanne de Salzmann, I Must Live the Insufficiency: A new feeling appears when the conditions of suffering are accepted
The Beatitudes: The words of Jesus Christ, with a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe
Vanessa Hurst, The Flight From Disunity: Thomas Merton and the gift of suffering
Jerry Toth, The Life and Death of the Rain Forest: Witnessing the agonies of the earth
Christian Wertenbaker, The Cosmic Necessity of Suffering: Suffering in the lives of humanity, the universe, and God
Ernest Shackleton, The Naked Soul of Man: A tale of endurance and survival
Roy Ashwell, Suffering and the Way: On being “naked at the foot of the path up the holy mountain”
Joshua Boettiger, The World Is On Fire: Insights on suffering from the Jewish tradition
George L. Beke, Intentional Suffering: Ancient wisdom, a profound spiritual way
Charles Upton, The Metaphysics of Suffering: Illuminations from the great Traditions
Rosemary Nott, Perceptions of “Suffering”: What is it, to suffer?
Fran Shaw, Notes On The Next Attention: Recollected talks of Michel de Salzmann at Chandolin
ARCS:
Let It Be
EPICYCLE
Shiva and Sati, Anonymous, Hindu, Retold by Diane Wolkstein
TANGENT
Writing In Circles, J.M. White, On Mary Douglas’s Thinking in Circles, Seyed Ghahreman Safavi and Simon Weightman’s Rumi’s Mystical Design, and Anthony Blake’s A Gymnasium of Beliefs in Higher Intelligence
BOOK REVIEWS
Men Of A Single Book, Mateus Soares de Azevedo, reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
Nine Lives, William Dalrymple, reviewed by Bill Williams
Tattoos on the Heart, Gregory Boyle, reviewed by Miriam Faugno
The Year of the Hare, Arto Paasalinna, reviewed by Elizabeth Napp
ENDPOINT
