The translation is accompanied by a series of interpretive essays by the translator. Stein maintains that the Parmenides text is an important poem as well as a philosophical treatise and translates it as such. His "Parmenides Project" comprises some thirty years of journal writings documenting an extended "thought experiment" in which he takes seriously Parmenides' assertion that Being and only Being truly "is" and that all else —all thoughts, intuitions, imaginings, sensations, perceptions, myths, philosophical opinions, by the very structure of "seeming" must "seem to Be." The author contends that this view suggests a practice of mind that corresponds to the culminating focus of many contemplative paths both East and West and is of contemporary interest because it assumes the relativism of much in present day philosophy without falling into abject nihilism.