Quotes from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“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.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“What we do and think in our own lives, then, becomes of extreme importance as it effects everything we're connected to.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit. They may indeed cause great harm.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“The theory of emptiness…is the deep recognition that there is a fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own existence in it, and the way things actually are.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“The view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is, to my mind, as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished, as this mind-set can lead to fundamentalism.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Can there be a completely different set of laws of physics in a different universe, or do the laws of physics as we understand them hold true in all possible universes? If the answer is that a different set of laws can operate in a different universe system, this would suggest (from a Buddhist perspective) that even the laws of physics are entangled with the karma of the sentient beings that will arise in that universe.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Buddhism and science share a fundamental reluctance to postulate a transcendent being as the origin of all things.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“The specific areas of science that I have explored most over the years are subatomic physics, cosmology, and biology, including neuroscience and psychology.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: 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.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“I wish to emphasize to the millions of my fellow Buddhists worldwide the need to take science seriously and to accept its fundamental discoveries within their worldview.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“no credible understanding of the natural world or our human existence—what I am going to call in this book a worldview—can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Science and technology are powerful tools, but we must decide how best to use them.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“There is more to human existence and to reality itself than current science can ever give us access to.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“The view that all mental processes are necessarily physical processes is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“What marks the transition from non-sentient to sentient beings? A model of increasing complexity based on evolution through natural selection is simply a descriptive hypothesis, a kind of euphemism for “mystery,” and not a satisfactory explanation.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“the first moment of consciousness of the new being must be preceded by its substantial cause, which must be a moment of consciousness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“This is a precious gateway into the alleviation of suffering, which I believe to be our principal task on this earth.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“For modern science, at least from a philosophical point of view, the critical divide seems to be between inanimate matter and the origin of living organisms, while for Buddhism the critical divide is between non-sentient matter and the emergence of sentient beings.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“On the whole, I think the Darwinian theory of evolution, at least with the additional insights of modern genetics, gives us a fairly coherent account of the evolution of human life on earth. At the same time, I believe that karma can have a central role in understanding the origination of what Buddhism calls “sentience,” through the media of energy and consciousness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“The Kalachakra texts claim that, prior to its formation, any particular universe remains in the state of emptiness, where all its material elements exist in the form of potentiality as “space particles.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Anton showed me an instrument that allows one to view an ionized single atom. Try as I might, though, I simply could not see it. Perhaps my karma wasn’t ripe enough to enjoy this spectacle.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Because I have no mathematical background, teaching me modern physics, especially esoteric topics such as the theory of relativity, was not an easy task. When I think of Bohm’s patience, his soft voice and gentle manner, and the care with which he made sure that I was following his explanation, I miss him dearly. As”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“As any layperson who has attempted to understand this theory is aware, even a basic comprehension of Einstein’s principle demands a willingness to defy common sense.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology. Yet are we clear about the place of science in the totality of human life—what exactly it should do and by what it should be governed? This last point is critical because unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit. They may indeed cause great harm.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Like modern science, Buddhism holds the basic premise that, at the most fundamental level, there is no qualitative difference between the material basis of the body of a sentient being, such as a human, and that of, say, a piece of rock.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“In order for the study of consciousness to be complete, we need a methodology that would account not only for what is occurring at the neurological and biochemical levels but also for the subjective experience of consciousness itself.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“Contemplative traditions on the whole have historically emphasized subjective, first-person investigation of the nature and functions of consciousness, by training the mind to focus in a disciplined way on its own internal states.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“In my view, the combination of the first-person method with the third-person method offers the promise of a real advance in the scientific study of consciousness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

“What we do and think in our own lives, then, becomes of extreme importance as it affects everything we’re connected to. The”
― Dalai Lama XIV, quote from The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

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“A few more years of the same, though, and I got used to it: I would load entire libraries from country castles and city mansions, fine, rare, leather- and Morroco-bound books, load whole trains full, and as soon as a train had thirty cars, off it would go to Switzerland or Austria, one kilogram of rare books for the equivalent of one crown of convertible currency, and nobody blinked an eye, nobody shed a tear, not even I myself, no, all I did was stand there smiling as I watched the train hauling those priceless libraries off to Switzerland and Austria for one crown in convertible currency a kilo. By then I had mustered the strength to look upon misfortune with composure, to still my emotions, by then I had begun to understand the beauty of destruction and I loaded more and more freight cars, and more and more trains left the station heading west at one crown per kilogram, and as I stood there staring after the red lantern hanging from the last car, as I stood there leaning on a lamppost like Leonardo da Vinci, who stood leaning on a column and looking on while French soldiers used his statue for target practice, shooting away horse and rider bit by bit, I thought how Leonardo, like me, standing and witnessing such horrors with complete composure, had realized even than that neither the heavens are humane nor is any man with a head on his shoulders.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, quote from Too Loud a Solitude

“If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can't live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or the systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others.

Now a narrative is a story, not a logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realize it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are a whole and you are a part. You are real and you are shadow. "Storyteller" and at the same time "character". It is through such multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world.

Yet without a proper ego nobody can create a personal narrative, any more than you can drive a car without an engine, or cast a shadow without a real physical object. But once you've consigned your ego to someone else, where on earth do you go from there?

At this point you receive a new narrative from the person to whom you have entrusted your ego. You've handed over the real thing, so what comes back is a shadow. And once your ego has merged with another ego, your narrative will necessarily take on the narrative created by that ego.

Just what kind of narrative?

It needn't be anything particularly fancy, nothing complicated or refined. You don't need to have literary ambitions. In fact, the sketchier and simpler the better. Junk, a leftover rehash will do. Anyway, most people are tired of complex, multilayered scenarios-they are a potential letdown. It's precisely because people can't find any fixed point within their own multilayered schemes that they're tossing aside their own self-identity.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protected and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, quote from The Law

“Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team”
― James C. Collins, quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“If you want to transform your karma to a more desirable experience, look for the seed of opportunity within every adversity, and tie that seed of opportunity to your dharma, or purpose in life. This will enable you to convert the adversity into a benefit, and transform the karma into a new expression.”
― Deepak Chopra, quote from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

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