I’ve worked and played with many koans – riddles intended to get “beyond” rational thought – but there’s one that, for me, does it all. If you’ve never considered the locus of your thoughts, do take a minute (hour, decade…) to ponder this simple question: “Where am I thinking?”

Of course, we know thoughts happen in the brain, that’s where all the neurons and synapses and the stuff of intelligence and emotion and memory, live. We know that—well, we’ve read it, it’s common knowledge.

We’re not like the ancient Greeks, who believed all that thinking and emotional stuff was harbored in our hearts (heart, cardiac, courage, credible, cordial, credo all derive from the same Indo-European root kerd-). They thought the brain, where we feel nothing, was maybe some kind of cooling system. Aristotle wrote, “The brain, then, tempers the heat and seething of the heart.” After watching decapitated chickens running around, he decided that all emotion springs from the heart, while the Stoics claimed that the heart is the seat of the soul. (Another guess attributed to the Greeks was that the brain’s raison d’être was to manufacture blood and semen.)

We know better, of course, we know we think with our brains—we can, for instance, watch PET scans of surges of blood flowing to different parts of the brain which correlate with thinking about different things. But can we actually feel anything? From my point of view, I might as well be that horned dude in the pic when it comes to knowing just where my thinking is actually happening.

I suppose this is like finding “myself.” Where is this “self” that I speak of so frequently and effortlessly, to whom I refer every time I precede a verb with “I”—as I’ve done three times—make that four!—in this sentence?

There’s something happening alright, some process that I label “thought” which I ascribe to “me.” But whereas when I hear a sound, or feel a touch, or see something, I can identify the general direction it’s coming from, what about a thought/ feeling/ memory/ idea? Where’s that coming from?

Where am I?

###

Barry Evans gave the best years of his life to civil engineering, and what thanks did he get? In his dotage, he travels, kayaks, meditates and writes for the Journal and the Humboldt Historian. He sucks at 8 Ball. Buy his Field Notes anthologies at any local bookstore. Please.