Heart-Shaped Puzzle
A Morning Meditation
I’m up before the others in our rental for the night and, in search of silent pastimes, gravitate to the heart-shaped jigsaw puzzle1 I spotted on a shelf and began piecing together last night. It’s an old-school puzzle made of wood, not cardboard. But perhaps new-school in its whimsically-shaped laser-cut pieces: pine tree, butterfly, starburst, heart. (Hearts within hearts.)
Doing a puzzle is a kind of silent congress with another mind or minds, those who’ve designed the clever toy. In other ways, too, puzzling can be a curiously personal process, as if the outer act of fitting the pieces mirrors an inner dimension whereby something is solved or worked through. In this case, something close to the heart.
Echoes, here, of another heart-centric project:
A decade ago I was living in Brooklyn and one afternoon I began drawing. What emerged was a sketch of a brain-shaped maze with a heart at the center. The heart had a keyhole. The only way out is through? More like the only way through is in.
After my move to North Carolina, this drawing became the inspiration for the vegetable and herb garden at Heartward Sanctuary. Pencil lines became straw-mulched paths and garlic beds.
In the four years since the garden was created, those twisting, tortuous paths have become streamlined, the pattern simplified. It’s hardly a maze anymore, or even a labyrinth. But the central bed retains its double-lobed shape. I intend to put a bench there so that, amid the tangle of vines, one can have a rest within the heart.
At the risk of stating the obvious, finding a way into the heart seems to be an ongoing theme with me. You see, I grew up a child of professors, brainiacs on both sides. Fascinated by mazes and puzzles, astrophysics and chess, I was raised on (and in) mental labyrinths. Values-wise, smarts were what counted above all in my family (the ultimate dismissal was to say of someone that they’re “not very smart”). How many kinds of intelligence the family definition of smarts could accommodate is another question. It certainly didn’t extend very far into the practical realm, nor was emotional intelligence especially highlighted.
But this isn’t to deny that the cerebral cortex is a fascinating place. Amidst its folds, the ceaseless firing of neurons serves to carve the world up into billions of pieces. There’s always something more to investigate. Yet it’s only in the precincts of the heart that we find coherence and communion. Only here that the pieces come together.
For all its computing power, the brain alone can’t solve the problems we face. Analysis alone will never be enough. Vital the heart’s qualities: warmth, courage, kindness, the many forms of love.
All the brain’s complex computation can—ought—to serve the heart-mind, the organ recognized in China since ancient times as the body’s rightful emperor2.
Without heart, we’re mere shards. With it, we stand a chance at being whole.
Back to the puzzle.
In the morning quiet, softly punctuated by the clicking of pieces, I complete the image. Two hundred shapes—bizarre ones, dream-like ones, jagged ones—join to form one.
I’ve reminded myself that the heart exists not only at our individual cores. It’s also the unifying field in which we live and breathe, that which joins us into something larger, more coherent.
Our individual spaces of resonance are also the means by which we resonate together, like voices joined in song, transcending if only for a moment the limits that come with these brains and bodies of ours.
To the heart, then.
Salud!
p.s. For those whose hearts are in need of a little love this morning, here’s a cordial recipe, some mbira music from the Shona men of Zimbabwe, some more from the women.
For those wondering where such puzzles can be found: https://zenchalet.com/collections/shop-puzzles
As I learned from Heiner Fruehauf, professor and mentor at NUNM, the Chinese word xin 心 is the only character for an organ to lack the part (called a radical) that signifies “flesh” or “meat.” That’s to say, the liver, lung, kidneys etc. are all recognized as pieces of tissue. The heart, on the other hand is about resonance, about receiving: unlike say the stomach, it works best when empty.
Now for that blasted key!!