The “heart” has never made a lot of sense to me. Intelligence, intellect, thinking, mind — these are terms I use and understand growing out of normal consciousness.

But recently the “heart” matter has seemed to come to my attention from several different sources. (I’ve learned to pay attention when the same subject seems to converge out of nowhere from multiple sources.) One important source was a newsletter from the resident monk at the temple I attend. Another was a talk on CD by Bo Lozoff at the San Francisco Zen Center. But there were more subtle pointers too. Finally I decided to spend some effort reflecting on it.

The bottom line of the reflection was that my mind does not trust the heart. It does not understand it, doubts its existence, and is quite suspicious that it is being led astray by another fanciful notion at any suggestion of “following” it. I was not aware my skepticism ran so deep.

My first inclination has always been to use the word intuition as a substitute for heart. That fails, though, because my intuition is sometimes faulty, and I’ve been injured at times by the flawed intuition of others. At times intuition is flawed because it is sourced in unnoticed motives and fears, that are also deeply flawed.

The mind (with good reason) has been taught to reject wispy sorts of evanescent notions like fairies, Santa Claus, souls, elves, pixies, and ghouls. It isn’t about to descend into the throes of superstition that has kept men in ignorant, destructive bondage for centuries. The medical profession’s fanciful intuitions about warding off evil spirits and bleeding people to drain the humors causing their illness have been replaced with the much more efficacious tools of scientific reason.

Ramana Maharshi once said of the mind:

It is a bad master, but a good servant

It is a bad master not because it is evil, but because it does not understand its limitations and role. It makes an implicit assumption that what it cannot conceive does not exist unless there is clear evidence of its blindness.

The crux of the matter is that mind cannot understand “heart.” It can understand sensation, feeling, memory, perception, concepts, and consciousness. But its domain is limited to what it can understand. When it comes up against things that it cannot understand, it still tries mightily, with the best of intentions to do so. For the deepest questions of consciousness and existence, the mind has tried mightily; religion and philosophy are the best it has been capable of. When those fail, it typically resorts to denial that the questions really exist or matter.

It is not just that the mind cannot understand the heart now; it never will. Heart just won’t fit within the confines of its understanding. The heart can be known, but not grasped or understood. So the mind will never be able to really say what the “heart” is. People have said: “Listen to the heart. Follow the heart. etc. etc. etc.” I really tried to understand what the heart was saying, but it never said anything I could understand.

If one takes the precepts as a guide to the attributes of heart, it’s clear that the domain of the heart completely transcends the small self the mind is preoccupied with. The questions from the heart are: “What is good? What is compassionate? What is wholesome? — for all beings — for all life?” Now it would really be neat if one could just ask those questions and answers to individual situations would fly to one’s mind. The nitty gritty of existence forever challenges pat answers. The best one can do is to start from the heart, clear and calm the mind, and then act.

The mind really wants to help here, but it’s mostly out of its league. It can only offer up what it thinks it remembered, what it fears, or what it hopes for as a guess as to what might happen. Educated guesses based on experience can offer perspective, but even they cannot reliably offer a solution — only a shrewd idea to be considered by a clear mind reaching to the heart for help.

The problem of course is that all this leaves me not really “knowing” what I’m talking about, which makes me feel a little flaky. And how do I possibly connect with something that is so indefinable? Rather than closing it out because I can’t grasp it, I’ve decided to make the alternative assumption that it can be known without understanding and grasping it — whatever that means — although it somehow seems possible. Maybe it’s like spinach where you know what it tastes like when you eat it, but “understanding” just doesn’t ever apply.

So, how do I start in a different direction without a roadmap? What does this mean for me in practical terms? I don’t know, except it seems the first step is to bring the mind back within its proper limits as a faithful servant rather than a master.

For now, in practical terms, it means the following:

• I am deliberately trying to shift the mind to its role of a servant — without any harshness, without any malice.
• I am undertaking a couple of wholesome initiatives that run counter to the wishes of the mind, but are consistent with the heart. One is of 30 days duration, the other six months. The intent is not to inflict pain, but to establish in my own thinking that I am not subject to the wishes of my mind.
• When I meditate, I am trying to bring my attention to this indescribable heart. My mind sometimes shrugs at the absurdity of the task and settles down.
• I am trying to remember to not think about what the heart is. The mind really believes that if it tries hard enough, it will eventually figure this thing out. I gently remind it, “No not really. Whatever you come up with will still only be words. As Lao Tzu said in the Hua Hu Ching :

If you attempt to fix a picture of it in your mind, you will lose it. This is like pinning a butterfly; the husk is captured, but the flying is lost.”

• I am going to attempt to take this heart approach to a couple of longstanding problems I’ve grappled with. Though the mind has made no headway with these problems, it insists that I’m being negligent and foolish by deliberately rejecting (even temporarily) its role as lead resource. At this point, I don’t have much to lose, except my ego, by trying something different.