The Mirror

"Reality replied: O prisoner of time,

I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,

and I wished this treasure to be known,

so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;

its darkened back, the world;

The back would please you if you've never seen the face."

- From Jalaluddin Rumi's poem "Be Lost in the Call"

A very wise philosophy professor once told me, "these eyes do not see the truth," and he pointed to his eyes...then he added "but these eyes do," pointing to his heart.  We automatically associate the eyeball with vision, why?  Well, because science explains this long, tedious and complex procedure about how our eyes allow us to "see."  Before I get started, you should be aware that I'm one of those people who value the arts...more so than science...and while no one can deny the importance of the latter, I prefer going back to classical philosophies and esoteric systems...for some reason they just make more sense to me.  

So we have eyeballs that enable us to see...we look around...we see the trees, the cars, the streets, the people...we form opinions, make judgements, choose to take in what "makes sense," and that's about it.  But think about what my professor told me...why is it that some traditions like Sufism, for example, stress the importance of the heart and not that of the mind.  The answer is actually quite simple.  Since our mind is "distorted," due to the lack of harmony in our personality, we do not "see" true things...we see things from certain perspectives...we impose our beliefs, ideals, morals and opinions on the things we see...falsely believing them to be true...and yet, as Rumi so eloquently puts it, what we see is the "darkened back, the world."  

It takes time to purify the heart...it requires dedication, persistence, meditation and patience...and only when we succeed, will we be able to see the truth.  This idea is not only restricted to Sufism though.  In Plato's famous work, The Republic, he talks about "the allegory of the cave," but to save you an extensive philosophic discussion allow me to sum up the basic idea.  Those trapped in the cave, submissive to their physical eyes, are fools...they think they see the truth and yet they only see shadows...while the one person, the "philosopher king" as Plato refers to him, is he who escapes, exits the cave and thus sees the "true" light...the light of truth.  

I am very much aware that the Buddha stresses the importance of the mind, and being a big believer in many of his teachings, I need to add one thing for those who take his sayings for granted.  What the Enlightened one is talking about is the harmonized mind; the mind that results from a harmonized physical body and thus is no longer attached to the phenomena, or the things of this world.  That very same mind is equivalent to the mirror of the heart--the clean slate that has been washed and disinfected from the distorted visions resulting from the conflicting personality (composed of four aspects: the physical, the vital, the emotional and the concrete mind).  

Whether you prefer using the word "heart" or "mind," they are almost the same...and all I'm advising you to do is to think twice about everything you see, feel, hear, touch...anything that you take in through your senses...they might be distorted, and you might be trapped in the hall of illusion.