Xin is the physical organ heart as the graph appeared in the bronze inscriptions, but it is the heart, rather than the brain that was believed to do thinking in the ancient China. According to Mencius, “the organs of the ears and eyes do not think and they are beguiled by living things. When living things have contact with one another, they simply attract each other. As for the organ of the heart, it thinks…” (Mencius, SZ, 2753) Likewise, Confucius informs us that at age seventy he could follow his mind/heart (xin) without going astray. (The Analects, SZ, 2461) On the other hand, Tao Te Ching states: “In dwelling it is the site that matters, in xin (thinking and feeling), it is the profundity that matters.” (Gao, 255) “Swift riding and hunting make xin (thinking and feeling) insane.” (Gao, 273)
In the Book of Poetry, the earliest collection of Chinese folk and royal songs, heart is as the center of emotions and sentiments, expressing grief, sorrow, disappointment, or tranquility and calmness, else where it is also made clear that heart is the source of intellect and understanding. Benjamin I. Schwartz remarks: “The very fact that heart is itself the center of will, emotion, desire, and intellect (both “rational” and intuitive) means that it will itself become the center of much contention in all the discussion concerning the relationship among all these ‘faculties’.” (Schwartz, 185)
References:
Gao, Ming 高明. 1996. Commentaries on the Silk Scroll Book of Laozi, Boshu Laozi Xiaozhu 帛書老子校註. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. 1985. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
SZ. Commentaries on the Thirteen Classics,
Shisanjing Zhushu
十三經註疏.1979. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.