The Universe in a Single Atom

by His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso the XIV Dalai Lama

"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 an analysis of why all avenues of inquiry - scientific as well as spiritual - 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 contemplativ