free counter with statistics The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness the Dalai Lama | Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People

dalai lama.jpg
#94 The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Cannonball Read / Brian Prisco

Book Reviews | June 22, 2009 | Comments (7)

Whenever science and religion get up in each other’s faces in the schoolyard and start swatting at each other like two gradeschool children battling in snowsuits, it gives me a chuckle. Anyone who has studied science, particularly the quantum physics and really intensive stuff, realizes that the further you go out in science the closer it begins to resemble religion. There’s far more overlap than dichotomy. It’s like when two rival teams play football. The fans are the ones in the stand slapfighting and screaming swears. The two teams have a job to do, and they go out and do it. It’s not personal. It’s only the really asshole idiots who make it so.

But this has nothing to do with this book. It’s just my stupid opinion based on stuff I heard about once. And that’s kind what this book is about. Boy, that’s a dick statement to write about the highest member of a major religion. The Universe in a Single Atom reads mostly like what it is: a learned religious scholar, and really a very nice old man, talking about all the famous people he talked to. It’s kind of like watching television with your grandfather, if he were one of those people fond of pointing out the obvious.

The Lama spends most of the book discussing a scientific theory, and then discussing a Buddhist tenet, and then saying see? Aren’t they similar? Shouldn’t we all be friends? I’m grossly oversimplifying matters, but really, each chapter is him saying, In Buddhism we say emptiness. In physics, they are studying the space between atoms. It’s very much alike. Would you like a flower?

I admire the fact that a religious scholar is trying to openly bridge the gap between faith and science. And the Dalai Lama is an extremely well-studied man. But really, the book seems incredibly unnecessary, and I didn’t feel like I learned anything from it. It was more like a thoughtful discussion with an old person who’s been well travelled and who is well read. I didn’t come away with any great insights. But it’s not like the Lama is preaching some sort of radical tenet of string theory. So he’s got that going for him.

This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. For more of Brian’s reviews, check his blog, The Gospel According to Prisco.


← Worst Movie Fathers of All Time | Box Office Results June 21, 2009 →



Comments

Wow. This isn't a comment on the book, per se, but I love your comment on science and religion. Why is everyone else always better at putting things into words than I am?

Posted by: redfeathers at June 22, 2009 9:16 AM

So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. - Caddyshack

Had to be said.

Posted by: TylerDFC at June 22, 2009 9:30 AM

Well, yeah. Except Cowboys fans. It's an objective universal truth that they're the scum of the earth.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at June 22, 2009 10:34 AM

If the subject matter of that book intrigues you but you seek something a bit less lowest common denominator, try:

The Monk and the Philosopher

and/or

The Quantum and the Lotus

The first book is a conversation between Mattieu Ricard, a highly trained French biologist turned Tibetan monk and his father, an eminent philosopher.

The second book is a conversation between Ricard and American physicist Think Xuan Thuan.

Posted by: icecreammang at June 22, 2009 11:05 AM

We are a group that is challenging the current paradigm in physics which is Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. There is a new Theory of Everything Breakthrough. It exposes the flaws in both Quantum Theory and String Theory. Please Help us set the physics community back on the right course and prove that Einstein was right! Visit our site The Theory of Super Relativity: Super Relativity

Posted by: mmfiore at June 22, 2009 1:25 PM

I think this is selling the Dalai Lama a bit short, here. You're arguing that "the Lama spends most of the book discussing a scientific theory, and then discussing a Buddhist tenet, and then saying see? Aren’t they similar? Shouldn’t we all be friends?" when that is in fact the exact opposite of what he's saying.

Let's talk about the chapter on emptiness - it's sort of a case-in-point as to his method of argumentation. His entire point in that chapter that the sort of emptiness described in physics (and he very clearly states that modern physics should take precedence over traditional Buddhist atomism) is a completely different type of "emptiness" than the type of emptiness in Buddhism, which is in fact a philosophical concept that holds that objects have no discrete, essential identity.

At this point (having established NOMA) the Buddhist concept of emptiness is a debate with Kant, Sartre, and Heidegger, (not to mention with Christ) not with science. This is his central point - the key concepts of a religion are not its proto-physics and are in fact irrelevant to its proto-physics.

In other words, if you feel like you didn't learn anything from it, it might be because you approached it as a book about science rather than a book about philosophy.

Posted by: withnail at June 22, 2009 2:31 PM

i wish there was a way for faith and scientific fact to both be right.

Posted by: Utah Dynamo at June 22, 2009 7:52 PM