Citta: Clarifying the heart-mind

IN much of modern culture, the "mind" is thought to live in the brain as reason and intellect, while the "heart" is seen as the seat of love, compassion, and feeling. This split runs deep in some languages and religions.

- (Don de Silva)

In the Tipitaka, the Buddha deals with this dualistic thinking. He applied the word citta to unite the dimensions: it is at once knowing and feeling, wisdom and compassion, awareness and warmth.

To cultivate cittabhavana is therefore not to train two separate faculties, but to nurture the single living stream of citta - the heart-mind -luminous when free from defilements that limit one's talents and skills, expansive and transformative when suffused with loving-kindness, and steady when garnered in samadhi and vipassana, together.

To understand the Buddha's vision of the human condition, it is essential to recover this unified sense of citta - not"heart"and "mind" as two separate faculties, but as one heart-mind stream of experience.

Citta in the Suttas