A deep and radically original exploration of Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist wisdom through the lens of the life and work of Tu Fu, widely considered China's greatest classical poet. What is consciousness but the Cosmos awakened to itself? This question is fundamental to the Taoist and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist worldview that shapes classical Chinese poetry. A uniquely conceived biography, Awakened Cosmos illuminates that worldview through the life and work of Tu Fu (712-770 C.E.), China's greatest classical poet. Tu Fu's writing traces his life from periods of relative normalcy to years spent as an impoverished refugee amid the devastation of civil war. Exploring key poems to guide the reader through Tu Fu's dramatic life, Awakened Cosmos reveals Taoist/Ch'an insight deeply lived across the full range of human experience. Each chapter presents a poem in three stages: first, the original Chinese; then, an English translation in Hinton's masterful style; and finally, a lyrical essay that discusses the untranslatable philosophical dimensions of the poem. The result is nothing short of remarkable: a biography of the Cosmos awakened to itself in the form of a magisterial poet alive in T'ang Dynasty China. Thirty years ago, David Hinton published America's first full-length translation of Tu Fu's work. Awakened Cosmos is published simultaneously with a newly translated and substantially expanded version of that landmark translation: The Selected Poems of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translated (New Directions).

The planets and their effect on the human race are at the heart of this stellar collection of provocative science fiction short stories, Adventures in the Cosmos by Darryl L. Gopaul. A second menacing moon appears in one story, which awakens powerful new forces on Earth. In another story, humanoids venture onto Earth and start to behave very differently than they usually do, right up until the moment they are called back to their home planet. In other stories, humans face a new biological phenomenon or gain new abilities, like telepathy. Hinting that strange, powerful forces are quietly guiding humans on Earth, Gopaul probes the possibilities that exist in the deepest pockets of outer space and right here on our home planet. Inspiring, stunning, and sometimes shocking, Adventures in the Cosmos shows that while the universe is our new frontier, it will take not just bravado but understanding to conquer or control it. A thinking person's collection of sci fi, Adventures in the Cosmos is both beautifully written and bolstered by the expertise of Gopaul, who is a microbiologist. In story after story, he prods you to see the earth, the planets, and yourself in new and original ways.

Explaining the Cosmos analyzes the writings of three thinkers associated with Gaza: Aeneas, Zacharias and Procopius. Together, they offer a case study for the appropriation, adaptation, and transformation of classical philosophy in late antiquity, and for cultural transitions more generally in Gaza. Aeneas claimed that the "Academy and Lyceum" had been transferred to Gaza. This book asks what the cultural and intellectual characteristics of the Gazan "Academies" were, and how members of the schools mixed with local cultures of Christians, philosophers, rhetoricians and monks from the local monasteries. Aeneas, Zacharias and Procopius each contributed to debates about the creation and eternity of the world, which ran from the Neoplatonist Proclus into the sixth-century disputes between Philoponus, Simplicius and Cosmas Indicopleustes. The Gazan contribution is significant in its own right, highlighting distinctive aspects of late-antique Christianity, and it throws the later philosophical debates into sharper relief. Focusing on the creation debates also allows for exploration of the local cultures that constituted Gazan society in the late-fifth and early-sixth centuries. Explaining the Cosmos further explores cultural dynamics in the Gazan schools and monasteries and the wider cultural history of the city. The Gazans adapt and transform aspects of Classical and Neoplatonic culture while rejecting Neoplatonic religious claims. The study also analyses the Gazans' intellectual contributions in the context of Neoplatonism and early Christianity. The Gaza which emerges from this study is a set of cultures in transition, mutually constituting and transforming each other through a fugal pattern of exchange, adaptation, conflict and collaboration.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the Bible. When we read Scripture we often imagine that the world inhabited by the Bible's characters was much the same as our own. We would be wrong. The biblical world is an ancient world with a flat earth that stands at the center of the cosmos, and with a vast ocean in the sky, chaos dragons, mystical mountains, demonic deserts, an underground zone for the dead, stars that are sentient beings, and, if you travel upwards and through the doors in the solid dome of the sky, God's heaven--the heart of the universe. This book takes readers on a guided tour of the biblical cosmos with the goal of opening up the Bible in its ancient world. It then goes further and seeks to show how this very ancient biblical way of seeing the world is still revelatory and can speak God's word afresh into our own modern worlds.

This book shows you how to develop applications that work with Azure Cosmos DB. Azure and other cloud applications typically work with massive amounts of data that can be organized in different ways. These applications will often require elastic scale out of storage and throughput, and to work across new geographical regions. This is the ...

The Observable Cosmos & The Unobservable Cosmos is the sixth entry in the Little Blue Book Series and comprises of the eleventh to twelfth discourses of the Monodoxy, which is itself the first disquisition of the founding book of Astronism which is titled the Omnidoxy. The Observable Cosmos & The Unobservable Cosmos discourse explores the notion that there exists four perceptual dimensions of The Cosmos; The Observable Cosmos, The Unobservable Cosmos as well as The Knowable Cosmos and The Unknowable Cosmos. This forms the important Astronic cosmology theory and belief of tetradimensionalism. The Little Blue Book Series was created and first published by Cometan himself as a way to simplify and commercialise the immensity of the two million word length of the Omnidoxy into smaller, more bite-size publications. A successful series from its very first published entry, the Little Blue Book Series has gone on to become a symbol of Astronist commercial literature and a way for Cometan’s words to reach readers of all ages and abilities who remain daunted by the beauty and yet the sheer extensiveness of the Omnidoxy as the longest religious text in history.

Astronomy, astrophysics and space research have developed extensively and rapidly in the last few decades. The new opportunities for observation afforded by space travel, the development of high-sensitivity light detectors and the use of powerful computers have revealed new aspects of the fascinating world of galaxies and quasars, stars and planets. The fourth, completely revised edition of The New Cosmos bears witness to this explosive development. It provides a comprehensive but concise introduction to all of astronomy and astrophysics. It stresses observations and theoretical principles equally, requiring of the reader only basic mathematical and scientific background knowledge. Like its predecessors, this edition of The New Cosmos will be welcomed by students and researchers in the fields of astronomy, physics and earth sciences, as well as by serious amateur astronomers.

The Future of The Expanding Cosmos is the twenty-third instalment in the Little Blue Book Series and comprises of discourse thirty-nine of the Monodoxy which is itself the first disquisition of the Omnidoxy, the founding treatise of Astronism. This single-discourse publication introduces the discipline of cosmontology known as omnology which deals with all theories, concepts, and beliefs regarding the nature, form, purpose, and eventualities of the expansion of The Cosmos. The Little Blue Book Series was created and first published by Cometan himself as a way to simplify and commercialise the immensity of the two million word length of the Omnidoxy into smaller, more bite-size publications. A successful series from its very first published entry, the Little Blue Book Series has gone on to become a symbol of Astronist commercial literature and a way for Cometan’s words to reach readers of all ages and abilities who remain daunted by the beauty and yet the sheer extensiveness of the Omnidoxy as the longest religious text in history.