of heart and mind

One of the most sad funeral dirges I have ever heard is a traditional hymn that calls Jonah to wake up and partake in prayer. In my vernacular it goes like:

Vuka Jonah sithandaze

Vuuuuka Jonah sith……..aaandaaaze

Vuka Jonah sithandazex3

Sifo somuntu yinhliziyo

Siiifo somuntu yinhliziyo x3

Loosely translated, Jonah (John) is being asked to wake up and pray but my main thrust is the last part which infers that the death of man is his heart. Nothing could be truer than that. I do not know how they chose to sing that song at funerals. One is tempted to believe that maybe they sing it at funerals of those whose hearts would have been their undoing.

This set me thinking. What the eye sees will not harm you or affect you unless the heart takes an attitude to it. For one to be revolted and to feel nausea the repulsion does not come from the eye. The eye reports a sight and the heart decides to accept or reject and the mind sends the appropriate signal hence at the sight of disgust, we are revolted and signaled to vomit. It is not the eye but the mind and the heart.

If the singer who coined that chorus saw that the heart was man’s undoing he should have gone on to be one of the greatest philosophers for it is true that fatal love is not from the fact of the eye, it is a derivative of a defiant heart, a heart that encapsulates itself in a conch of self existence and defies all reality until the wheels come off.

So, what you hear will not kill you. How your heart handles what you hear will have a telling effect. How your mind manages what you hear will have a resounding effect. What you see will not harm you but how you handle it when your heart takes a liking to it will affect you. Seeing trouble will not harm you , walking away from trouble will not harm you but scooping coals into your bosom because your heart wants to drink from another man’s well will surely kill you.

When the heart is shrouded in pain, bitterness, rage etc all that will bilge from it is the negative bile, all the signal the heart and mind will give is violence and harm. Think of Jack the Ripper, all he saw from blonde haired women was the woman who hurt and abused him when he was young and thus every blonde woman he saw revolted him. Some of the women he killed were very beautiful but all this was masked by the rage and anger that his heart held for that blonde woman who abused him and more that forty women paid with their lives.

For sure the fate and undoing of man is in his heart. What your heart perceives and conceives forms your perception. It is not your eyesight, hearing, sense of smell etc that has the compass of your life. It is the state and condition of your heart and mind that hold the key to your way of life.

As the sun rises tomorrow, what says your heart of the things you see and hear?