A Japanese researcher, specialist of laughter, took part in a meeting between the Dalai Lama and a group of scientists and philosophers, organized by the Mind and Life Institute to which I belong. This distinguished researcher was scheduled to make his presentation on the fifth and final day of the meeting. During the week he rarely intervene...

‟To make laugh those who return from the fields with their hands so stiff that they can not close them, those who leave the office with their little narrow chest who forgot the taste of the air, those returning from the factory, head down and broken back, with black oil in the cuts of their fingers, make laugh those who approach death, those ...

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 someone who suffers, while laughting would be contemptuous of his suffering. There are sad and melancholic smiles ...

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. These figures do not necessarily mean that the people of Eastern Europe are less open to their peers....

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, and amusement, to name just a few. People also smile when they ar...

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 child - ‟To know your mother, O child, learn to read in the book of her smile,” wrote Virgil - the smile of one who contemp...

Soon after hearing about Wilbert Rideau's testimony (see ‟Spared to Do Good”), I saw a CNN interview conducted by Piers Morgan of a popular and influential evangelist preacher in the USA. In the interview he seemed to be an ever-smiling good person. He said that he hardly remembers ever getting angry, which is indeed a good point.  Piers...

The New York Times called Wilbert Rideau the ‟Most Rehabilited Man in the America”. He was born into poverty and raised in Louisiana in a heavily racist environment. He was abandoned by his brutal father and his mother worked as a maid and later had to go on welfare. In 1961, when he was 19, Wilbert robbed a bank, hoping to steal enough m...

The Mind and Life XXIII meeting on ‟Ecology, Ethics, and Interdependence” recently took place in Dharamsala, India, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a host of eminent scientists and thinkers. (These meetings can be seen on Youtube, or on www.dalailama.com, and www.mindandlife.org) Professor Diana Liverman from the University of Arizon...