Sh. Muhyiddin Ibn al-ʿArabī

06 The Heart Is the Center of Human Life and Consciousness

The heart is the center of human life and consciousness. The Qurʾan and the Hadith talk repeatedly about the need to have a healthy and wholesome heart, which is an awareness that sees things as they truly are and acts appropriately.^[5]

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By placing awareness and understanding in the heart and not in the brain, Islam links up with much of the ancient world. This is perhaps most obvious with China, where both Confucians and Daoists tell us that the primary human task is to rectify the heart – even if most translators render the Chinese word for heart (xin 心) as ‘mind’ in an attempt to make sense to modern readers.