The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is an amazing person, and for a student of Buddhism, his summation of that religion when asked as “My religion is kindness” is a great inspiration. I would really recommend that you look into Buddhism if you haven’t already done so – I believe it has a lot to teach us about how to live happily 
But The Universe in a Single Atom is not entirely about Buddhism – it is rather, an example of one of the world’s great spiritual leaders, leader of an ancient tradition, tackling some very modern days issues which are often outside the remit of religion: namely, science. In my previous review I looked at Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics, and the Dalai Lama’s book sees this great man bringing science and sprituality together in a religio-political context, comparing ancient Buddhist science with the modern quantum physics. Apart from anything else, this book shows what a learned and yet open-minded man he is, and his compassion and loving kindess for all of humanity shines through – Buddhism is not a system which judges or discriminates. The book looks at plenty of modern day scientific problems and paradoxes, and the Dalai Lama is very open minded about these, acknowledging how much science has changed since the time of the Buddha, and also how science has served humanity.
But his message is a serious one – in a world where science has cured many of our immediate wants, and to all intents and purposes given us in the West everything we need, people are less happy than ever! For both myself and the Dalai Lama, this is indicative that material wants are not our only wants – which is why he argues for a compassionate approach to science in this interesting and accessible book. In a world where science and technology increasingly makes leaps which are almost beyond comprehension, it is important to remember that these leaps are supposed to serve us and make our lives better – yet science has many double edged swords, for example the nuclear bomb and genetic engineering. The Dalai Lama urges us collectively as a species to ensure that science continues to serve humanity – and not the other way around!
A very interesting, thought provoking and accessible work, the Universe in a Single Atom is written with sensitivity and compassion, as you would expect from one of the world’s great spiritual teachers.
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It sounds simple – be nice to people, and they will be nice back! Treat a friend with interest and respect and guess what, they will probably do the same back. Treat employees well, and they will be more productive. Sounds simple. Yet there are still plenty of people who do things the nasty way to get what they want – and the world over businesses that treat their employees like scum in the hope of squeezing that little extra out of them. Well, such people need to read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie!
First published in 1936, this mother of all self help books as seen plenty of predecessors – yet it remains one of the most interesting and accessible guides on how to survive and thrive in a competitive and often unpleasant world. Since that first publication and Dale Carnegie’s talks all that time ago, millions of people have benefited from the simple and appealing wisdom to be found in this book. Of course no book can simply turn your life around without some effort, and although there is guidance there is no magic forumula guaranteed to work – life is no an exact science! But if you take even a quarter of the principles in this book and embed them into your life, I am willing to bet you would see some positive changes!
I had great fun trying out some of the techniques, and was delighted to see them work. I tried some out on complete strangers and the smiles were very rewarding – but I also saw relationships with people I knew improve as well. People who read this book reviews blog know I try to be a positive person – and this book is based on positive thinking, and the positive idea that you CAN appeal to people’s better natures – maybe not always, but definitely a lot of the time.
Just one example – today I had something go wrong with a website. I remember countless times before I read this book, sending snotty emails to the tech support, complaints, etc, and the problems would drag on. Well, this enquiry today, I followed some of Dale Carnegie’s advice, the problem was solved quickly and cheerfully, and everyone was happy. Now if only we could get just about everyone to read this book – what a world we’d live in!
(But you can make a start right now by ordering this book and learning how you too can win friends and influence people – or see below for some more great Dale Carnegie books )
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Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics is a seminal work and can now be considered a modern classic. I recently re-read this book and can recommend it to anyone who is looking to reconcile the seemingly opposite worlds of modern science and spirituality – there are many such books now, but I think many of them owe a great debt to Capra’s work!
For as long as I can remember, I have been looking for ways of integrating the many ways there are of looking at the world into some kind of coherent whole (a bit like my own personal grand unified theory of everything!) – and along the way I have come across eastern spirituality which fascinates me, and quantum physics, which also fascinates me. In my world view, any philosophy, explanation or theory of existence and humanity which leaves out quantum physics and the mysterious makeup of the Universe that science is unravelling, is just a tad blinkered. And science itself is similarly blinkered I would say if it ignores some of the lessons that spirituality has to offer. It is therefore fascinating to read this book and discover that the ancient eastern spiritual knowledge has much to share with the world of modern physics! While Capra does not go into the why’s of these similarities, he offers a very detailed study of the similarities between the two ways of thinking which allow the reader to formulate their own questions – and it is my belief that, perhaps, the universe is trying to tell us something
The book opens beautifully with an account of Capra witnessing what he pictured as a gigantic cosmic Dance of Shiva, and how this prompted some of the motivation to write the book. And we are then treated to a detailed study of how both schools of thought – Eastern Spirituality and Modern Physics – appear to point to the same “Truth” – that everything is interconnected, in a state of flux, co-dependent, knowable and yet elusive.
The book was first written in 1975, and in those days books were not subject to the dumbing down of some more modern releases, so in parts readers might find it heavy going, I certainly did, especially as my grasp of mathematics is not great, and some sections go into physics quite a lot. But this is a failing on my part and not the author’s and the more I read the book, the more I understand. It is certainly a beautiful book, and well worth reading, definitely one of those books that will irreversibly change the way you look at the world and yourself in the grand scheme of things.
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This is a great little psychological thriller on the “revenge theme” – and shows that the emotions involved in revenge can often lead to clouded thinking and misguided actions. Tom Clone is convicted of the murder of a young woman in this Alan Gregory novel, but years later a brilliant FBI agent uncovers new evidence that casts doubt on his case, and he is released. But release into a changed world withi his missing years of freedom signals the beginning of his problems, and as he unravels these with psychologist Gregory and event unfold, it becomes clear that someone from the past believes Clone is guilty, and they are about to exact a terrible revenge…
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