[Buddha-l] Heart of the matter? (was: the advent of the meditation machine?)

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 29 October 2007 09:44, Christopher Fynn wrote:

> One wonders why so many cultures locate the source of feelings in the heart
> while recognizing that the brain is the central processor of the body?

I suspect it's because many emotional states are felt in the chest area. The 
pulse quickens, respiration changes, one feels like vomiting etc. (Goddamn 
it, there I go talking about my reactions to almost all the presidential 
candidates again.) 

As for thinking, I swear that when I think, it FEELS to me as if the activity 
is going on in my head, nowhere else. But I suspect that is because I have 
been taught that thinking goes on in the head. Eventually one begins to 
experience what one has been taught to be true, and then one mistakenly 
thinks that experiences confirm one's beliefs and that one is being a robust 
empiricist. On the other hand, it could be that intellectual activity is 
closely associated with vision, which for human beings is pretty much 
unmistakably located in the head. (Do you hear me? If so, you surely see what 
I mean.)

But let's get back to a moment to the issue of where in the body religious 
sensibilities are located. I know the answer. Its political season again here 
in the USA. (When is it NOT political season in this place where democracy 
has become a parody of an incessant reality TV program?) Political discourse 
in this country is not aimed at the head or at the heart, but directly at the 
adrenal glands. Every candidate assures us that we must be afraid---very 
afraid---of some totally fictitious spook or another. (This year's favorite 
flavor of spook is a non-entity called "Islamofascism.") In this respect, 
politics in America is not much different from religion in the world as a 
whole. So my candidate for the principal physical location of the religious 
impulse is the adrenal glands.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico