"HEART" VS "MIND"

Now this one has been bothering me for ages ...

For as long as i remember, various characters around me have been advising me on usage of Heart & Mind... “Use your Mind brother not your heart”... “don’t be an emotional fool use your mind” .... “Oh come on, have a heart” .... “a heart is always right” .... “be practical- follow your mind” ... now this conflict of heart VS mind has become a mystery and when few days back at the National Police Academy I heard a very senior journalist and intellectual discuss the difference between heart and mind, I was so damn sure that I am not the only one facing this classic dilemma ........ HEART or MIND??

So what is this all about?? if we ask from point of view of their function or characteristics then heart is a physical organ - it keeps all other organs functional and regulates and circulates blood around the body. Mind is more connected with brain and mental thoughts. The word heart that we use in daily life to denote love, affection, good feelings are supposed to be connected with heart. But technically or scientifically it does not have any relation with the organ heart that we have. The heart here denotes characteristics of a person or his attitude. Mind is generally the intellectual capacity - it has a strong base and connection with brain. But on the other hand our physical heart and people saying we have a big heart are two different things. Use of heart in context of feelings or emotions is just a phrasology in English and other languages too.

Have heard ppl around me say ... “heart is mortal, mind is immortal” .... “Heart is emotional mind is without emotions” .... “Heart is volatile, while mind is rational” ... “Heart is a way to reach the mind”.But I guess mind is the thinking faculty and heart is the emotional faculty.. You can be in two minds but you can never have two hearts ... on the other hand while you cannot apply half a mind to anything, you sure can perform a task whole heartedly or half heartedly... phew! Getting more confusing haan??

Now, I have also come across “head thinking” and “heart thinking”.. it is said that Because it is ego-driven, head thinking can often be delusory. Heart thinking is focused on reality and therefore unlikely to go too wrong.... Ever since I read this fascinating concept I have been pondering over the difference between heart thinking and head thinking. Most gurus and spiritual teachings exhort us to make this very transition-from head to heart. But what does it actually mean? For most head thinkers this appears to be an inferior state of mind.

But on the other hand, along with the word ‘heart’, the word ‘love’ is often dragged in to many conversations and used to describe all manner of behaviour good and bad....... When we talk about the heart we mean the space in the middle of the chest we point to when we say ‘this is me’ – the place we feel the essence of our being more than anywhere else...... It is also where most of our higher and nicer qualities emanate from – empathy, kindness and love :) ....Emotional attachment, on the other hand is a tangled up array of feelings from the mind.... but the sources of love and emotional attachment are located so lose together, they can and are often confused by the indiscriminating person.....poor guy :) ... However, setting aside some time each day for a practice of self-discovery and self-enquiry (e.g. meditation) will very quickly enable you to distinguish one from the other.

Phew! Enough ... i must stop writing before i get further confused and get all other who reading this confused as well