heart and mind

I have been pondering about the puzzling, sometimes paradoxical, sometimes muddled usage of the words heart and mind with head frequently used metonymically for mind or brain. When and how did the heart become associated with feeling and warmth and the mind reserved for more cooler things? Linguistically, things are pretty muddled. When we recall something, we say it comes to mind but we also say committing to heart or learn it by-heart as we used to say in middle school. You can also be hot headed (impulsive) or cool headed (calm), you can be cold hearted or warm hearted. When your lover jilts you, you are broken hearted not minded but some people are more open minded than others.

I am sure these questions have puzzled humankind for millenia. The Egyptians considered the heart to be center of everything which is why they preserved it for after life. While excellent scrabble words now, ib (heart), ba (soul) and ka (life force) were fundamental concepts in ancient Egyptian religion and culture.

The Heart sutra is something i have chanted so many times and i didn't realize until recently that it doesn't refer to the heart even once. mind and no-mind are its subject. Yet, compassion and wisdom, ideas which form an integral part of Buddhism are closer to the heart than to the mind. (Thinking or discriminatory) mind is something you are told to drop. Does it mean that non-discriminating knowledge is located in the heart? Or is some part of the mind (limbic system, say) itself the "heart", for certainly 17th century biology established that the heart is a pumping organ. But it is probably much more than a lump of specialized muscle tissue. Emotions make the heart beat faster via hormonal mechanisms which in turn supplies the brain more blood. Could that be the reason why even Aristotle and the ancient greeks, located intelligence and even the soul (as the stoics believed) within the heart. Of course, others say the heart has an "intelligence" of its own- curiously it is the strongest source of electromagnetic fields in the body- ecg is an order of magnitude higher than eeg.

I end with a waka by Dogen

mind is buddha: easy to explain, hard to practice.
no mind , no buddha: easy to practice, hard to explain.