FOCUS | From the Editor

“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 suffer- ing 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