Archive du blog pour April 2013

From smile to laughter

Laughter often follow up on smile and amplifies it. Yet all forms of smiles do not lend themselves to this transition and in some cases, laughter is not an appropriate extension of smiling. We can smile with sincere compassion to

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A geography of smile?

Some researchers have spoken of a ‟geography of the smile.” By examining photographs found on 2000 pages of social networks in Europe, they found that, on these photographs, 55% of the British smiled, against only 25% of Poles and Hungarians.

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Eighteen kinds of smiles

According to Paul Ekman, ‟Smiles are much more complicated than most people realize. There are dozens of smiles, each differing in appearance and in the message expressed. There are many positive emotions signaled by smiling—enjoyment, physical or sensory pleasure, contentment,

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A thousand smiles

The smile of the Buddha celebrates the peaceful victory over ignorance, hatred, craving, arrogance and jealousy. But there is also the smile of a loved one, the smile of one who loves, a mother’s smile and the smile of a

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108 Smiles-1

‟A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”

From ‟108 Smiles”, a photo book recently published in French under the name ‟108 sourires” at Editions La Martinière

image

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Dealing with craving

Desire is a mainly a drive. You may desire to save the planet or to free all sentient beings from suffering. But when desires become entangled with craving and powerful attachments, our experience shows that they lead to suffering.

Desire

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Dialogue with Jane Goodall — Part1 How Animals are Treated.

Matthieu: There is an unbroken connection and continuity between the various animal species and humans. The reality of this continuum should make humans re-examine the way we treat other animals

Jane Goodall: There is of course no question that there

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The tragic flaws of torture

Torture is still widely practice all over the world as a supposedly efficient way of extracting confessions from allegedly guilty people. Torture certainly works to obtain confessions, the problem being that such confessions have, more often than not, not much

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