The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality , Dalai Lama , Morgan Road Books, New York, 2005. $24.95 (216 pp.). ISBN 0-7679-2066-X
Last November, amid some controversy, Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV, addressed more than 10 000 scientists at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Washington, DC. He spoke about recent developments in the “neuroscience of meditation” and the ethical implications of science. The Dalai Lama’s talk was the most recent instance of his lifelong interest in science, a story engagingly told in his The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.
The Dalai Lama articulates the need for what he terms an “urgent engagement” between Buddhist philosophy and science. He writes that both traditions seek to reduce human suffering, but each uses complementary methods: Science labors to understand and to master the outer conditions of humanity; Buddhist philosophy seeks insight into and mastery over the inner causes of suffering. Both are necessary in his view, and society can only benefit by an open and sustained dialog between the two traditions.
In the book one reads about the Dalai Lama’s childhood fascination with telescopes, watches, and automobiles in a Tibet that, outside the Potala Palace where he lived, lacked all modern machines. As a child it seems he was unique in his curiosity concerning Western science and technology. His flight from an occupying Chinese army in 1959 brought him squarely into a contemporary Indian society that was fast becoming a technologically sophisticated culture, a fact that impressed him mightily. As both the temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama traveled widely, and he sought out scientists for conversations, both technical and philosophical. For example, he spoke often with Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and David Bohm, each of whom became his friend and mentor and whom he describes with great appreciation. By the mid-1980s, he had also begun extensive conversations with neuroscientist Francisco Varela, who in 1987 organized the first of a dozen Mind and Life discussions in which five or six scientists would meet with the Dalai Lama for an intensive five-day exchange concerning important topics at the intersection of science and philosophy. I have been part of several of these remarkable meetings, most actively in those dealing with physics and cosmology. The Universe in a Single Atom is the fruit of those many Mind and Life dialogs, as well as conversations with scientists during his travels.
Varela recognized that Buddhist meditative introspection could offer an important complementary perspective to that granted by conventional third-person methods of investigating the mind that are common to Western neuroscience. In cognitive neuroscience the combination of Buddhist meditative introspection and Western neuroscience has been remarkably fruitful, with experiments running at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Princeton University, Harvard University, and the San Francisco and San Diego campuses of the University of California that can be traced back to the Dalai Lama dialogs.
Not until 1997 did a Mind and Life dialog on physics and cosmology take place, for which I was the scientific organizer. Since then, attendees Anton Zeilinger, Steven Chu, Piet Hut, George Greenstein, David Finkelstein, and others have worked with the Dalai Lama, explaining the subtleties of quantum mechanics, relativity, and astrophysics—as well as debating their philosophical implications. The Dalai Lama’s special interest in modern physics stems from the manner in which it challenges naive views of reality. How should we as a society conceptualize reality, and what is the appropriate philosophical attitude toward theories and their primitives? The critical analysis of reality advanced by Buddhism is primarily philosophical, not empirical. It argues against naive realism or an immutable independent reality, and for what Buddhists term “emptiness.” For example, to the Dalai Lama, the problem of observation in quantum mechanics appears as “resonant” with the logical arguments of Buddhist philosophy, particularly the Prasangika school’s view of co-dependent origination. And the property of quantum entanglement resonates with the Buddhist concept of interdependence. He considers such exchanges as genuine aids to a deeper understanding of reality, thus becoming a basis for the mitigation of suffering.
I expect that many scientists will approach the book with skepticism. What can one learn that is relevant to science from the leader of a world religion? Some Mind and Life participants arrive at the dialog sessions with such an attitude, but the Dalai Lama quickly establishes his openness to well-reasoned arguments and data, even if it entails abandoning long-established Buddhist doctrine. His enthusiasm for science and its contributions to society is genuine, but he distinguishes between the findings of science and the philosophical position of scientific materialism. Not surprisingly, he rejects the latter in favor of a fuller view of reality, a view I share.
The Universe in a Single Atom is an important exemplar of open-minded engagement between different intellectual traditions, an engagement that enriches our shrinking planet. The Dalai Lama, like us physicists, recognizes the powerful role that science has had and continues to play in shaping the world. He has listened and learned much from those scientists who have generously given their time to working with him. He has repaid us with a thoughtful and challenging volume that I believe will become a small classic in the dialog between science and religion.
