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 are miserable. These… Read more »
Read moreA 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 child – ‟To know your mother, O child, learn to read in the book of… Read more »
Read more108 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
Read moreDealing 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 usually starts with an image. If the image is enticing and promises pleasure, it triggers… Read more »
Read moreDialogue with Jane Goodall — Part 3: The Endless Killing of Animals
Matthieu: Human intelligence can produce Gandhi and can also produce Hitler. But a superior intelligence does not give humans the right to slaughter at will billions and billions of animals every year. It seems that the value of an animal is practically zero compared to that of a human. During the episode of the Hoof… Read more »
Read moreDialogue with Jane Goodall : Part 2 Becoming Aware of the Suffering behind Eating Meat
Matthieu: It seems also that slaughterhouses are guarded as if they were top-secret military facilities. You can’t see anything. But if it were shown even a little bit to people, they would find it intolerable. Jane: There is a wonderful woman in America. She got a job in an abattoir and managed to secretly film… Read more »
Read moreDialogue 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 is a continuity of feelings and emotions. There is no question that animals feel pain…. Read more »
Read moreThe 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 to do with the truth. In countless cases, the target confesses something as the only… Read more »
Read more‟One has never seen a safe on a coffin.”
Recently, I met an elder person who was expressing her sadness that many of her friends where so attached to their money, even as death was coming near. She concluded: ‟What is the point? One has never seen a safe on a coffin. » What would we like to leave to our children? An embellished… Read more »
Read moreChildren no longer climb trees
I recently visited a friend who lives in Franche-Comté and whose parents, now retired, were the last independent farmers of that region. Now, there are no more. As we travelled across the countryside, my friend told me, ‟In the past, during the cherry-picking season, we were all in the trees feasting. Now, cherries remain on… Read more »
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