Yet in their mutual, sincere examination of the challenges and rewards of finding and maintaining contentment, they strike me as two of the year's most joyous films.
While it is unclear whether her objection is a psychological one or a normative one, she does maintain that achieving contentment requires an 'infinite science' (4:289) so that we might know all of the impact of our actions, and so properly evaluate them.
In other words, liberation is available; it's an active state, a verb that requires a degree of effort, not a noun suggesting a place one arrives at; being freed from needless suffering requires continuous mental awareness; it requires discipline and practice to cultivate and maintain a state of contentment throughout the inevitable pains and frustrations of life.
Today, Burma is back to the Orwellian paranoia that has passed for normality here for years, where anger and dissent must be hidden and the daily image of contentment maintained to ensure survival.
Maintain, maintain, maintain.
Sadly, the Communist Party is doing a good job maintaining the delicate equilibrium between upheaval and contentment.
The lasting contentments of awakening can be maintained, as they are produced by that resources entirely within our control: the skill of focusing the mind, relinquishing unskillful thoughts and sustaining the proper attitudes of kindness, appreciation, equanimity, focus.
They now know that maintaining this requires new lifestyles, characterized by voluntary simplicity and contentment.
Feeling safe activates the ventral-vagal mediated parasympathetic nervous system (PNS-VVC) associated with contentment, social engagement, and pro-social behaviors via the facial muscles that are involved in maintaining eye contact, listening to human speech and making appropriate facial expressions [ 37, 38].
The LCS contains two factor-analyzed subscales: Contentment and Contention.
Observe the warm smiles of contentment.
