Print List Price: | $15.99 |
Kindle Price: | $6.99 Save $9.00 (56%) |
Sold by: | Random House LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality Kindle Edition
After forty years of study with some of the greatest scientific minds as well as a lifetime of meditative, spiritual and philosophical study, the Dalai Lama presents a brilliant analysis of why both disciplines must be pursued in order to arrive at a complete picture of the truth. Science shows us ways of interpreting the physical world, while spirituality helps us cope with reality. But the extreme of either is impoverishing. The belief that all is reducible to matter and energy leaves out a huge range of human experience: emotions, yearnings, compassion, culture. At the same time, holding unexamined spiritual beliefs–beliefs that are contradicted by evidence, logic, and experience–can lock us into fundamentalist cages.
Through an examination of Darwinism and karma, quantum mechanics and philosophical insight into the nature of reality, neurobiology and the study of consciousness, the Dalai Lama draws significant parallels between contemplative and scientific examination of reality. “I believe that spirituality and science are complementary but different investigative approaches with the same goal of seeking the truth,” His Holiness writes. “In this, there is much each may learn from the other, and together they may contribute to expanding the horizon of human knowledge and wisdom.”
This breathtakingly personal examination is a tribute to the Dalai Lama’s teachers–both of science and spirituality. The legacy of this book is a vision of the world in which our different approaches to understanding ourselves, our universe and one another can be brought together in the service of humanity.
- ISBN-13978-0767920667
- PublisherHarmony
- Publication dateSeptember 13, 2005
- LanguageEnglish
- File size959 KB
Kindle E-Readers
- Kindle Paperwhite
- Kindle Oasis
- All New Kindle E-reader
- Kindle Voyage
- Kindle Paperwhite (5th Generation)
- Kindle Oasis (10th Generation)
- All New Kindle E-reader (11th Generation)
- Kindle
- Kindle Paperwhite (11th Generation)
- Kindle Scribe (1st Generation)
- Kindle Oasis (9th Generation)
- All new Kindle paperwhite
- Kindle Paperwhite (10th Generation)
- Kindle (10th Generation)
- Kindle Touch
Fire Tablets
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
—Garry Wills, author of Why I Am a Catholic
“With disarming honesty, humility, and respect, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has explored the relationship between religion and science and suggested the way in which they can affirm and qualify each other’s insights. By juxtaposing traditional Buddhist teaching with the discoveries of modern physics and biology, he infuses the debate about such contentious issues as the origins of the universe, the nature of human consciousness, the evolution of species and genetic engineering with intimations of profound spirituality and shows how these questions can further our search for ultimate meaning. But above all, his gentle but insistent call for compassion is desperately needed in our torn and conflicted world.”
—Karen Armstrong, author of A HIstory of God and The Spiral Staircase
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
*
REFLECTION
I have spent many years reflecting on the remarkable advances of science. Within the short space of my own lifetime, the impact of science and technology on humanity has been tremendous. Although my own interest in science began with curiosity about a world, foreign to me at that time, governed by technology, it was not very long before the colossal significance of science for humanity as a whole dawned on me--especially after I came into exile in 1959. There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology. Yet are we clear about the place of science in the totality of human life--what exactly it should do and by what it should be governed? This last point is critical because unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit. They may indeed cause great harm.
Seeing the tremendous importance of science and recognizing its inevitable dominance in the modern world fundamentally changed my attitude to it from curiosity to a kind of urgent engagement. In Buddhism the highest spiritual ideal is to cultivate compassion for all sentient beings and to work for their welfare to the greatest possible extent. From my earliest childhood I have been conditioned to cherish this ideal and attempt to fulfill it in my every action. So I wanted to understand science because it gave me a new area to explore in my personal quest to understand the nature of reality. I also wanted to learn about it because I recognized in it a compelling way to communicate insights gleaned from my own spiritual tradition. So, for me, the need to engage with this powerful force in our world has become a kind of spiritual injunction as well. The central question--central for the survival and well-being of our world--is how we can make the wonderful developments of science into something that offers altruistic and compassionate service for the needs of humanity and the other sentient beings with whom we share this earth.
Do ethics have a place in science? I believe they do. First of all, like any instrument, science can be put to good use or bad. It is the state of mind of the person wielding the instrument that determines to what end it will be put. Second, scientific discoveries affect the way we understand the world and our place in it. This has consequences for our behavior. For example, the mechanistic understanding of the world led to the Industrial Revolution, in which the exploitation of nature became the standard practice. There is, however, a general assumption that ethics are relevant to only the application of science, not the actual pursuit of science. In this model the scientist as an individual and the community of scientists in general occupy a morally neutral position, with no responsibility for the fruits of what they have discovered. But many important scientific discoveries, and particularly the technological innovations they lead to, create new conditions and open up new possibilities which give rise to new ethical and spiritual challenges. We cannot simply absolve the scientific enterprise and individual scientists from responsibility for contributing to the emergence of a new reality.
Perhaps the most important point is to ensure that science never becomes divorced from the basic human feeling of empathy with our fellow beings. Just as one's fingers can function only in relation to the palm, so scientists must remain aware of their connection to society at large. Science is vitally important, but it is only one finger of the hand of humanity, and its greatest potential can be actualized only so long as we are careful to remember this. Otherwise, we risk losing our sense of priorities. Humanity may end up serving the interests of scientific progress rather than the other way around. Science and technology are powerful tools, but we must decide how best to use them. What matters above all is the motivation that governs the use of science and technology, in which ideally heart and mind are united.
For me, science is first and foremost an empirical discipline that provides humanity with a powerful access to understanding the nature of the physical and living world. It is essentially a mode of inquiry that gives us fantastically detailed knowledge of the empirical world and the underlying laws of nature, which we infer from the empirical data. Science proceeds by means of a very specific method that involves measurement, quantification, and intersubjective verification through repeatable experiments. This, at least, is the nature of scientific method as it exists within the current paradigm. Within this model, many aspects of human existence, including values, creativity, and spirituality, as well as deeper metaphysical questions, lie outside the scope of scientific inquiry.
Though there are areas of life and knowledge outside the domain of science, I have noticed that many people hold an assumption that the scientific view of the world should be the basis for all knowledge and all that is knowable. This is scientific materialism. Although I am not aware of a school of thought that explicitly propounds this notion, it seems to be a common unexamined presupposition. This view upholds a belief in an objective world, independent of the contingency of its observers. It assumes that the data being analyzed within an experiment are independent of the preconceptions, perceptions, and experience of the scientist analyzing them.
Underlying this view is the assumption that, in the final analysis, matter, as it can be described by physics and as it is governed by the laws of physics, is all there is. Accordingly, this view would uphold that psychology can be reduced to biology, biology to chemistry, and chemistry to physics. My concern here is not so much to argue against this reductionist position (although I myself do not share it) but to draw attention to a vitally important point: that these ideas do not constitute scientific knowledge; rather they represent a philosophical, in fact a metaphysical, position. The view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is, to my mind, as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality.
One of the principal problems with a radical scientific materialism is the narrowness of vision that results and the potential for nihilism that might ensue. Nihilism, materialism, and reductionism are above all problems from a philosophical and especially a human perspective, since they can potentially impoverish the way we see ourselves. For example, whether we see ourselves as random biological creatures or as special beings endowed with the dimension of consciousness and moral capacity will make an impact on how we feel about ourselves and treat others. In this view many dimensions of the full reality of what it is to be human--art, ethics, spirituality, goodness, beauty, and above all, consciousness--either are reduced to the chemical reactions of firing neurons or are seen as a matter of purely imaginary constructs. The danger then is that human beings may be reduced to nothing more than biological machines, the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes, with no purpose other than the biological imperative of reproduction.
It is difficult to see how questions such as the meaning of life or good and evil can be accommodated within such a worldview. The problem is not with the empirical data of science but with the contention that these data alone constitute the legitimate ground for developing a comprehensive worldview or an adequate means for responding to the world's problems. There is more to human existence and to reality itself than current science can ever give us access to.
By the same token, spirituality must be tempered by the insights and discoveries of science. If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished, as this mind-set can lead to fundamentalism. This is one of the reasons I encourage my Buddhist colleagues to undertake the study of science, so that its insights can be integrated into the Buddhist worldview.
2
*
ENCOUNTER WITH SCIENCE
I was born into a family of simple farmers who used cattle to plow their field and, when the barley was harvested, used cattle to trample the grain out of the husk. Perhaps the only objects that could be described as technological in the world of my early childhood were the rifles that local warrior nomads had probably acquired from British India, Russia, or China. At the age of six I was enthroned as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, and embarked upon an education in all aspects of Buddhism. I had personal tutors who gave me daily classes in reading, writing, basic Buddhist philosophy, and the memorization of scriptures and rituals. I was also given several tsenshap, which literally means "philosophical assistants." Their primary job was to engage me in debate on issues of Buddhist thought. In addition, I would participate in long hours of prayers and meditative contemplation. I spent periods in retreat with my tutors and sat regularly for two hours at a time four times a day in a meditation session. This is a fairly typical training for a high lama in the Tibetan tradition. But I was not educated in math, geology, chemistry, biology, or physics. I did not even know they existed.
The Potala Palace was my official winter residence. It is a huge edifice, occupying the entire side of a mountain, and is supposed to have a thousand rooms--I never counted them myself. In my spare moments as a boy, I amused myself by exploring some of its chambers. It was like being on a perpetual treasure hunt. There were all kinds of things, mainly the belongings of former Dalai Lamas and especially of my immediate predecessor, preserved there. Among the most striking of the palace's contents were the reliquary stupas containing the remains of the previous Dalai Lamas, reaching back to the Fifth, who lived in the seventeenth century and enlarged the Potala to its present form. Amid the assorted oddities I found lying about were some mechanical objects which belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Most notable were a collapsible telescope made from brass, which could be attached to a tripod, and a hand-wound mechanical timepiece with a rotating globe on a stand that gave the time in different time zones. There was also a large stash of illustrated books in English telling the story of the First World War.
Some of these were gifts to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama from his friend Sir Charles Bell. Bell was the Tibetan-speaking British political officer in Sikkim. He had been the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's host during his brief sojourn in British India when he fled in 1910 at the threat of invasion by the armies of the last imperial government of China. It is curious that exile in India and the discovery of scientific culture are things bequeathed to me by my most immediate predecessor. For the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, as I later found out, this stay in British India was an eye-opening experience, which led to a recognition of the need for major social and political reforms in Tibet. On his return to Lhasa, he introduced the telegraph, set up a postal service, built a small generating plant to power Tibet's first electric lights, and established a mint for the national coinage and the printing of paper currency. He also came to appreciate the importance of a modern, secular education and sent a select group of Tibetan children to study at Rugby School in England. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama left a remarkable deathbed testament, which predicted much of the political tragedy to come and which the government that succeeded him failed to understand fully or to heed.
Among the other items of mechanical interest acquired by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama were a pocket watch, two film projectors, and three motorcars--two Baby Austins from 1927 and a 1931 American Dodge. As there were no drivable roads across the Himalayas or in Tibet itself, these cars had to be disassembled in India and carried across the mountains by porters, mules, and donkeys before being put back together again for the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. For a long time these were the only three automobiles in all Tibet--and pretty useless they were, since there were no roads outside Lhasa on which one could drive them. These various items, the telltale signs of a technological culture, exercised great fascination on a naturally curious and somewhat restless boy. There was a time, I remember very clearly, when I would rather fiddle with these objects than study philosophy or memorize a text. Today I can see that these things were in themselves no more than toys, but they hinted at a whole universe of experience and knowledge to which I had no access and whose existence was endlessly tantalizing. In a way, this book is about the path to discovering that world and the wonderful things it has to offer.
I did not find the telescope a problem. Somehow it was quite obvious to me what it was for, and I was soon using it to observe the bustling life of Lhasa town, especially the marketplaces. I envied the sense of abandon with which children of my age could run about in the streets while I had to study. Later I used the telescope to peer into the night sky above the Potala--which offers, in the high altitude of Tibet, one of the most spectacular views of the stars. I asked my attendants the names of the stars and constellations.
I knew what the pocket watch was for but was much more intrigued by how it worked. I puzzled over this for some time, until curiosity got the better of me and I opened up the case to look inside. Soon I had dismantled the entire item, and the challenge was to put it back together again so that it actually worked. Thus began what was to become a lifelong hobby of dismantling and reassembling mechanical objects. I mastered this process well enough to become the principal repairer for a number of the people I knew who owned watches or clocks in Lhasa. In India later on, I did not have much luck with my cuckoo clock, whose poor cuckoo got attacked by my cat and never recovered. When the automatic battery watch became common, my hobby got much less interesting--if you open one of these, you find hardly any mechanism at all.
Figuring out how to use the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's two hand-cranked film projectors was much more complicated. One of my attendants, an ethnic Chinese monk, worked out how to make one of them function. I asked him to set it up so that I could watch the very few films we had. Later we got hold of a sixteen-millimeter electrically powered projector, but it kept breaking down, partly because the generator which powered it was faulty. Around this time, I guess in 1945, Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter, Austrians who had escaped over the Himalayas from a British prisoner of war camp in northern India, arrived in Lhasa. Harrer became a friend of mine, and I would occasionally turn to him to help fix the projector. We could not get many films, but numerous newsreels of the great events of the Second World War made it across from India, giving the story from an Allied perspective. There were also reels of VE Day, of the coronation of King George VI of England and Laurence Olivier's film of Shakespeare's Henry V, as well as some of Charlie Chaplin's silent movies.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B000FCKCZQ
- Publisher : Harmony (September 13, 2005)
- Publication date : September 13, 2005
- Language : English
- File size : 959 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 224 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #366,680 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #117 in Tibetan Buddhism (Kindle Store)
- #382 in Tibetan Buddhism (Books)
- #468 in Science History & Philosophy
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was born in 1935 to a peasant family in northeastern Tibet and was recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The world's foremost Buddhist leader, he travels extensively, speaking eloquently in favor of ecumenical understanding, kindness and compassion, respect for the environment, and, above all, world peace.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book insightful and interesting. They describe it as a brilliant book that links science and spirituality, providing a deeper understanding of Buddhism and its philosophy. However, opinions differ on readability and clarity - some find it concise and easy to understand, while others find parts difficult to follow due to heavy philosophy content.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful and interesting. They say it connects the mind, religion, physics, and thousands of years of Buddhism. Readers describe it as an important book that clarifies some core issues in Buddhism. The book offers an enriching way to explore ideas and poses great questions for reflection.
"...This is a fascinating, well-written book. I recommend it to fellow Buddhists and anyone interested in the interaction between science and religion." Read more
"...It is an easy read and is both an overview of a number of critical areas in current scientific research and a spiritual interpretation and synthesis...." Read more
"...Lama seems to have wanted to write this book thanks to a life-long fascination with science coupled with insights of his years of Buddhist training...." Read more
"...It's a beautiful, connected, and enriching way to explore ideas. It's an offer of a true meeting...." Read more
Customers find the book a good guide for understanding science and spirituality. They say it's a well-thought-out book that can help Buddhist believers integrate science into their lives. The author has a curiosity about science and a pragmatic streak, putting them in context of Buddhism.
"...This is a fascinating, well-written book. I recommend it to fellow Buddhists and anyone interested in the interaction between science and religion." Read more
"...This is not just a book for Buddhists, but for anyone interested in the broader issues of life and the Universe. Highly recommended." Read more
"Who can critique the Dalai Lama? He is a smart, wise, man with a curiosity about pure science, and a pragmatic streak about technological..." Read more
"...book he shows himself exactly as such, as he attempts to compare and contrast the methods of science and the methods of Buddhism...." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's readability. Some find it concise and easy to understand, providing a layperson's perspective on quantum technology and science. Others feel the book is difficult to read in its current format and not suitable for everyone.
"...I will warn that it is not light bedtime reading -- I've switched it to my daytime reading; you want to absorb the brilliance of this book when you..." Read more
"...This is without doubt the clearest and most accessible of the Dalai Lama's books examining the relationship between contemporary Buddhist thought..." Read more
"...the basic premise to be very interesting, but after reading it I felt unsatisfied." Read more
"A must read for anyone who wants a really easy to read layperson's perspective on and explanation of quantum mechanics and other elements of modern..." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's clarity. Some find it clear and concise, while others find some concepts difficult to understand and parts heavy with philosophy.
"...This is without doubt the clearest and most accessible of the Dalai Lama's books examining the relationship between contemporary Buddhist thought..." Read more
"...Beautifully written , the guy is a complete genius! Somewhat difficult to follow, because his knowledge of areas of science and spirituality is..." Read more
"A clearly and concisely written book that shows the author's journey on the path of deeper understanding of science and spirituality..." Read more
"I enjoyed this book immensely. I found some parts difficult to get through because they were heavy with philosophy, a subject I'm not particularly..." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2007As a Zen student with a Ph.D. in physics I often ponder the integration of scientific and religious world views. This is a bit easier for Buddhists because our religion places less emphasis on belief than other faiths do. I see science as a tool that uses measurement to understand nature, while religion deals with ethics and human experience. The Dalai Lama comes to similar conclusions, although more eloquently, in his book "The Universe in a Single Atom."
Both science and religion inspire a sense of wonder and help us understand our place in the cosmos, so comparing them, as the Dalai Lama does in this book, can be worthwhile. He writes well about science. I found his descriptions of physics accurate, although he missed some of the subtleties of the EPR experiment. As expected from a meditator, he points out that science has yet to explore subjective experience. The Dalai Lama draws parallels between the empirical exploration of mental states in the Tibetan tradition and the scientific method. This empiricism first drew me to Buddhism. In fact, my intimate thoughts and feelings have often seemed more immediate and real than some ghostly trace on an oscilloscope that represents "objective reality."
The Dalai Lama gently points out questionable assumptions made by scientific reductionists. For the most part I think his criticisms are valid. Although he's willing to abandon doctrines disproved by modern science, I wonder if the Dalai Lama would be willing to put the Buddhist bedrock teachings of karma and rebirth to the empirical test. If these are truly universal laws, they should be demonstrable by more than personal anecdote. I would have been interested if he'd discussed this more.
This is a fascinating, well-written book. I recommend it to fellow Buddhists and anyone interested in the interaction between science and religion.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2006Many people feel that one of the really important issues facing us all, is whether it is possible to find some middle ground between science and spirituality, or whether they are simply different experiential and philosophical categories that have no business trying to get together.
For over thirty years, the Dalai Lama has been at the forefront of efforts to find a rapprochement between the insights of Buddhism and the discoveries made using the scientific method. His journey has led him to have detailed discussion with some of the finest minds: the late David Bohm, John Eccles and Karl Popper to name just three. This is without doubt the clearest and most accessible of the Dalai Lama's books examining the relationship between contemporary Buddhist thought and Western science.
There are many gems in here, but there are one or two of particular importance. I still hear people translate the term "Karma," as "Fate," or as a law of causality. The author makes it clear that karma means "action," and he clearly differentiates it as the mechanism by which an intentional act will reap certain specific consequences. Karma refers to the intentional acts of sentient beings.
The book is full of such insights. It is an easy read and is both an overview of a number of critical areas in current scientific research and a spiritual interpretation and synthesis. This is not just a book for Buddhists, but for anyone interested in the broader issues of life and the Universe.
Highly recommended.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2019Who can critique the Dalai Lama? He is a smart, wise, man with a curiosity about pure science, and a pragmatic streak about technological applications. Should they benefit mankind, alleviate suffering, they are good. The Dalai Lama seems to have wanted to write this book thanks to a life-long fascination with science coupled with insights of his years of Buddhist training. He tells us as a boy growing up he had no training in western science whatsoever, but he was fascinated with a few (first-half 20th century) examples of western technology belonging to his predecessor. As a young man, once vested in his office, he availed himself of a new-found access to many of the world's greatest minds, philosophers, scientists, artists, and so on. He has gone on talking and learning from great minds ever since.
After this introduction, the book looks at the physical (cosmology, quantum mechanics, relativity) and then life sciences. I was hoping he would not get into a "Buddhism discovered it first" argument, and mostly he does not. He comes close on the subject of quantum mechanics but I think mostly because at the time, the people from whom he learned it still took seriously the idea that individual human minds (for example that of a researcher) could be responsible for wave-function collapse. If this were true (the idea has long been put to rest as concerns individual minds) the tie-in with the Buddhist mind-first world-view and deep exploration of that first-person (consciousness) world would indeed be strong.
Even within quantum mechanics his eminence is sensitive to the great gulf between the western scientific paradigm and the focus of Buddhism. He well illustrates these differences while pointing out to scientists that much of what they take to be the "structure of reality" is a metaphysical assumption. It does not follow necessarily from scientific methodology which so well illuminates structure as concerns the physical world.
But this same methodology can say very little about consciousness. It is with consciousness that he spends much of the book examining the views of modern brain-science and how they might relate to Buddhist discoveries. The views of these different worlds stem as much from the purposes of their separate investigations as the technique; empirical 3rd-party evaluation versus highly-trained rigorous introspection. Becoming a master monk takes as many years as obtaining a PhD in physics (more in fact), but he mis-uses the term 'empirical' here. What the monk does and what the monk learns in the doing should not be dismissed by western science, but it is still subjective and for that reason not empirical. He advocates for joint research. Neuro-scientists together with trained monks, he thinks, might help unlock some of the mind's mysteries. He also is aware that not all mysteries are unlock-able!
In the book's penultimate chapter he uses the then-new technology of genetic manipulation to plead with the scientific community to take it slow. He wants us all to be asking the right questions concerning the long term affects of the possibilities on our humanity. Here the contribution of Buddhism is the importance of compassion, of constant awareness of the mission to alleviate suffering. He is very good at identifying frightening possibilities in the technology and lists them. At the same time, aspects of the field, the need to produce more food, provided it isn't motivated purely by financial gain, can be good. In his last chapter, his eminence returns to the same subject, a cooperation between science and Buddhism's focus on bettering the human estate, not only physically or biologically, but socially, psychologically, and spiritually.
The book is full of interesting philosophical implications I will perhaps explore on my blog. These have more to do with physics, cosmology, and what western philosophy calls metaphysics than with consciousness which Buddhism takes more or less for granted. The idea that the stuff of the universe is fundamentally phenomenal suffuses all schools of Buddhism, while in the West the idea, while not unknown, is viewed with great suspicion. Where consciousness is concerned, his emphasis falls on intentionality, our capacity to direct our attention, but he never mentions free will. Like consciousness itself, perhaps Buddhism takes free will for granted.
Top reviews from other countries
- Nuno TanackovićReviewed in Spain on January 30, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Buddhism / Science
Love this book! A book for live. To study again and again.
- Dr.K.Vasantakumar PaiReviewed in India on February 8, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect blend of spirituality and science
A perfect blend of spirituality and science,people are believing that science and religion are parallel concepts.But in this book these are unified.
-
Michael DaumReviewed in Germany on January 16, 2016
5.0 out of 5 stars Wirklich lesenswert!
Dem Dalai Lama gelingt es, Wissenschaft und Die Frage nach dem Bewusstsein in den Kontext von Spiritualitaet zu setzen. Dabei ist er stets auf dem Boden der Dinge, findet anschauliche Bilder und berührt den Leser. Wir sind alle eins, Danke fuer das gute Buch! Hat mir viel Freude bereitet.
- Big BillReviewed in Canada on April 20, 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars Heavy duty Stuff. Read "A Universe from Nothing" , then this...
I recently read " A Universe from Nothing " by Prof L. Krauss. I recommend it highly , it is cutting edge quantum physics in
laymans terms , and is very interesting and entertaining to read. "The Universe in a Single atom " is from 2005 , but the ideas
discussed by the Dalai Lama are somewhat older. The blending of ancient thoughts with modern quantum physics is
mind boggling. Any book that the Dalai Lama produces is worthy of a look , he is a knowledgeable fellow , but this book is a gem in
two different disciplines . Very heavy stuff, highly recommended , and on the Amazon used market it is inexpensive.
-
Giovanni A. OrlandoReviewed in Italy on September 24, 2013
5.0 out of 5 stars Un Libro ispirtatore e chiarificatore ...
Anche se ho acquistato in libreria questo libro in Spagnolo a Caracas, nel 2007, ho preferito acquistarlo nuovamente in Inglese, che sarebbe per cosi dire, la versione originale.
Infatti sua Eminenza il Dalai Lama, spiega e racconta il Punto di vista del Big Bang, l'esempio di Paradosso dei Gemelli collegato con il viaggio di Asanga all'Universo di Maitreya, nella tradizione Budista ... ecc.
E' un libro il cui piano mentale ... mi ha inspirtato significativamente il mio libro, in fase di sviluppo, 'Why Einstein Theory of Relativity is Wrong?' ... che pubblichero anche in Italiano ... Infine la proposta del Dalai Lama, viene assolutamente da questo libro ed é ... 'La Scienza della Coscienza'.