Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings

The parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism are no longer mere esoteric musings, and nowhere is that concept shown better than in Thomas McFarlane's Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. As in other titles in the Parallel Sayings series, the author cuts and pastes sayings from one thinker or school of thought and matches them to resonant sayings from another wholly different tradition--to astonishing effect. The correspondences between modern physics and Buddhism (and Taoism, which McFarlane also includes) are attested to by the physicists themselves. In his preface, McFarlane, who has degrees in physics as well as philosophy and religion, identifies the major parallels as "the wholeness of all things, the description of reality through paradox, [and] the relationship between the observer and the observed." Only occasionally succumbing to pitfalls that crop up in other books in the series, such as focusing on translated terms rather than concepts or keying on narrow passages rather than fully contextualized views, McFarlane uncovers both the science of Buddhism and the mysticism of physics. --Brian Bruya