“We read to know that we are not alone.” — C.S. Lewis
Many of the signals we receive from an early age tell us to rely on our own resources – something about our ‘bootstraps.” Our education system celebrates individual accomplishments, each of us wrestling with the material alone, barred from helping one another. The system offers little support for the collaborative spirit. We celebrate the role of the lone genius, the myth of the hero leader, the unique potency of the mad inventor.
Twenty-two versions of the incandescent lamp preceded Thomas Edison’s and yet most Americans credit him with its ‘invention.’ As for the Wright Brothers, about twenty heavier-than-air mechanical flights had been documented prior to their first successful glider flight in 1902. By design or default, Edison and the Wrights were consummate collaborators who stood on the shoulders of many before them; how could they not be?
Yet the history books tell stories of brilliant, solitary minds – minds that we believe to be fundamentally different from our own. What if this isn’t true?
–Barry Svigals, “The Lone Genius,” an excerpt from a new book entitled Collaboration on the art of working with others that appears in the summer issue of Parabola. Pick up the latest issue to read more excerpts from the book, as well as a conversation we had with Barry Sviglas in a coffee shop in Manhattan.
PHOTOGRAPH: Barry Svigals. Image courtesy of The Arts Paper and Svigals & Partners
“Last night, in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stood alone and heard the voice of the singer of the eternal melodies. When I went to sleep, I closed my eyes with this last thought in my mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the dance of life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body, keeping step with the stars. The heart will throb, the blood will leap in the veins, and the millions of living atoms of my body will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string that thrills at the touch of the master.” — Rabindranath Tagore
We are all related—all descended from a Great Mystery. Please consider joining Parabola editor Tracy Cochran at Yoga Shivaya, in Tarrytown, New York on Mother’s Day. We will be still together and then listen to (and see!) the harmonic chant of singer, composer, and Parabola music editor David Hykes, which renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin described as “the music of the spheres.” Hykes has collaborated with many great teachers and traditions, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the Gyuto and Gyume monks. From 7 to 9 pm. This event is offered freely all those who are mothers or who have or had mothers. There may also be cookies!
For directions and more information, please visit Yogashivaya.com.
“… then one morning in the midst of it all, the fox came.”
A touching story by Ted McNamara in our new summer issue.
“When we leave ourselves alone, when we’re flowing like we’re supposed to flow … we automatically go into a creative mode.”
–Alan Arkin from a conversation with David Ulrich in “Broadening the Arc of Devotion,” PARABOLA, Summer 2012.
Introducing the Summer 2012 Issue: “Alone & Together.”
FOCUS | From the Editor
Alone and Together
“The hardest spiritual work on the planet is to try to work in everyday life,” says architect Barry Svigals in this Summer 2012 issue of PARABOLA. “We rarely talk about how difficult it is for a person in a family … to live a spiritual life while the kids are crying, diapers need to be changed, a job has to be done, all those things.”
How is it that we manage to follow any sort of spiritual path in the midst of the mayhem that is ordinary life?
“He aspired to carry the cloister within him … he knew he could not live in a monastery,” writes Brother Paul Quenon earlier in this Alone & Together issue. Brother Paul, who studied with Thomas Merton, is referring to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, but his words apply to most contemporary seekers.
Most of us do not live in monasteries, but we recognize that we need others along the way, and perhaps especially because we reside in the modern-day secular world. Through others we find meaning and purpose, and in them we see useful mirrors of ourselves. Yet we also recognize a profound need for silence, for the stillness of solitude, for the cloister within, the Kingdom of God as Jesus called it.
How can we wisely balance the need for both solitude and community in our lives and in our spiritual search?
This issue of PARABOLA explores that question through interviews, articles, stories, poems, and art. Among its many highlights are an extensive interview with veteran movie star and Vedanta student Alan Arkin, and another with Buddhist monk and photographer Matthieu Ricard. There is deep wisdom from Saint Syncletica, one of the ancient Desert Mothers, and a powerful tale of vengeance and remorse from the Japanese Noh tradition. Also in this issue, we celebrate Peter Rabbit on his 110th anniversary, share the wonderful bonding of a man and a fox, and offer excerpts from two new books, one of which concerns a woman who grows angel’s wings.
May you enjoy and benefit from this latest issue of PARABOLA.
—Jeff Zaleski, Editor & Publisher
COVER: Nuns / monks at eight-hundred-year-old birthday celebration / rituals of the Buddhist Drukpa Lineage, Naro-Photang Shey (Shey Monastery), Leh Ladakh, Indian Himalayas, India. ©Timothy Allen: humanplanet.com.
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“What you are looking for is what is looking.”
—St. Francis of Assisi, from Parabola, v.29 no.3, August 2004
(Source: apoetreflects)
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” — Plato (via libraryland)
“If you are working inwardly, Nature will help you. For the man who is working, Nature is a sister of charity; she brings him what he has need of for his work. If you need money for your work, even if you do nothing to get it, the money will come to you from all sides. In another case, Nature will cut off all a man’s resources if it is necessary for his work.
[To another student]: Do you understand? For instance, had you had money a certain evening, you would have gone to a cafe but having none, you stayed at home and worked. Nature is more intelligent than you; she knows better than you which are the best conditions for your work; and if you work, Nature calls on conscious spirits who will arrange for you the conditions you need. For ordinary man, for the man who does not work, there is nothing but chance. But for the man who works, Nature gives him through conscious spirits all that he needs.”
—G.I. Gurdjieff