01 Jul Acknowledgements

I have a tremendous sense of fulfillment at reaching this milestone on my journey, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge all those who cajoled me, supported me and lent me a helping hand whenever I stumbled. I am tremendously grateful to the numerous folks who freely participated in various conversations that shaped my understanding of the human predicament. They contributed through various blogs and social networks, RealClimate, ClimateProgress, DotEarth, The Climate Project and Facebook. Without standing on their shoulders and tapping into their varied perspectives, I couldn’t have taken the incremental steps that led to the contents of this book.

I am also immensely grateful to Jaya Row, Paramhansa Yogananda and Purushottam Lal for their wonderful insights into Vedanta and Hinduism, which they so generously dispensed to the world at large through their videos and books. I am thankful to my classmate, Gourish Hosangadi for connecting me with Jaya Row, his sister. It was only after I attended her lecture in Milpitas, CA, that I watched all her videos on Youtube, which helped clear out some of the cobwebs in my mind.

When I look back at the first draft of the book, I realize the tremendous debt of gratitude that I owe my reviewers who helped mold Carbon Dharma into its final form. Billy Davies, Marilyn Cornelius, Juan Jover, Narayan Subramanian, Gani Ganapathi, Joseph Murray, Dan Miller, Mohan Jain, Stuart Scott, Pam Malhotra, Doug Carmichael, Paul Valva, H-S. Udaykumar, Eric Osgood, Jaclyn Richards, Abbey Moffit, Manju Seal, Richard Pauli, Edward Hummel, Umesh Rao, Brian McLaren and Kamal Prasad were truly co-authors of the book as they chiseled away the rough edges and shaped the book into its present form. I am especially grateful to Brian McLaren for writing the Preface, Juan Jover for highlighting some glaring issues in the early drafts, Manju Seal for suggesting a reordering of chapters that worked better, Paul Valva for being the English teacher and catching many of my grammatical errors, Joe Murray for bringing the Brian Morton article to my attention, Gani Ganapathi, Nilima Sabharwal and Chaya Prasad for convincing me that I have something useful to contribute and lastly, to Marilyn Cornelius for ironing out many of my early, clumsy sentences, for being so incredibly positive about the book from the first draft onwards and for graciously contributing a beautiful poem to conclude the book. Finally, I wish to thank Prof. Thomas Kailath, my Ph. D. advisor at Stanford, for being such a good mentor and for providing me with the backbone to embark on such an endeavor in the first place.

My wife, Jaine, has been a rock in my life. Our love has grown stronger through all our vicissitudes and she has been the best life partner that I could have ever wished for. I’m truly blessed to have her and our family as companions on this wonderful journey called Life.

Sailesh Rao
Danville, CA, Oct. 2011.