Tricycle | Awake in the World

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is well known for his longstanding interest in science and, in recent years, for his scholarly engagements with scientists at the (now annual) Mind and Life conferences. Mind and Life: Discussions With The Dalai Lama on the Nature of Reality by Pier Luigi Luisi with Zara Houshmand (Columbia University Press, 2008, $24.95 cloth, 209 pp.) documents in narrative form the 2002 conference in Dharamsala, India, which focused on an age-old question—the relationship between life and matter. Though dense scientific jargon occasionally makes for slow going, biochemist Luisi, a conference participant, provides a lively account of the discussions on topics like emergence, complexity, and the human genome.