Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality » (Unabridged)

Tenzin Gyatzo, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and is both the temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama travels the world speaking on peace and interreligious understanding, giving Buddhist teachings, and meeting with political leaders as he works tirelessly on behalf of the Tibetan people. He resides in Dharamsala, India, and is the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

In this rare, personal investigation, His Holiness the Dalai Lama discusses his vision of science and faith working hand in hand to alleviate human suffering. Drawing on a lifetime of scientific study and religious practice, he explores many of the great debates and makes astonishing connections between seemingly disparate topics–such as evolution and karma–that will change the way we look at our world.

While he sees science and faith as “complementary but different investigative approaches with the same goal of seeking the truth,” the fact is that the two have often been at the root of human conflict for centuries. In The Universe in a Single Atom the Dalai Lama challenges us to see that the benefits of opening our hearts and minds to the connections between science and faith are far preferable to perpetuating the divisive rhetoric that often surrounds them. He believes that such enlightenment is the key to achieving peace within ourselves and throughout the world.

Only one other book–the New York Times bestselling Ethics for the New Millennium–has been published with such intense personal involvement from the Dalai Lama himself. Now, as we face such troubled and uncertain times, the need has never been greater for this extraordinary man’s compassionate thoughts and wise words.

The New York Times - George Johmson

… this book offers something wiser: a compassionate and clearheaded account by a religious leader who not only respects science but, for the most part, embraces it. "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims," he writes. No one who wants to understand the world "can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics."