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Dalai Lama Backs Digital Venture To Map Emotions

LYNN NEARY, HOST:

The Dalai Lama describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk, but he's also invested in a new digital venture that he hopes will make compassion and self-awareness go viral - atlasofemotions.com. Navigate to the site and you'll see a list of the universal human emotions.

The site says there are five - anger, fear, disgust, sadness, enjoyment. Each state of mind is represented by its own glowing circle. Click on one - let's say disgust - and you see a kind of intensity scale - dislike all the way up to loathing. Click again and some common actions are mapped out. You can avoid something that disgusts you, dehumanize it, withdraw, even get sick to your stomach.

According to the atlas, anything coming out of the body triggers disgust. But an even more intense trigger for disgust - fans of opposing sports teams. Once you've worked through an emotion, you end up at a bubble labeled calm. Just what the Dalai Lama hoped for. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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