Rod Dreher on the Heart

He reports on "evidence, though not conclusive, from medical research to substantiate the TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine] and Orthodox view that the human heart is in some sense an organ of intuition" — The conscious heart. Mr. Dreher explains that "both Orthodoxy and TCM see the physical heart as the integrative organ of the human personality."

I quoted a report some time ago that "[t]he Vatican City state does not use certification of brain death... because this would tend to equate the human person with brain function" and that "[f]orty years ago a committee of the Harvard Medical School published a report recommending the adoption of brain death as the criterion for declaring a person dead," which in effect "meant the cessation of heart and lung function were no longer the only criteria for declaring someone dead" — Hearts and Lungs, Not Brains.

"It is interesting that traditionally, both East and West, breath has been synonymous with spirit, as evidenced by the importance of breathing in Indic religions or the Greek word πνεύμα," I wrote at the time. "And the heart has traditionally been seen as the seat of emotion and even conciousness, as evidenced by the ideogram 心 which can refer to both the organ and to the concept of mind."