This series explores the cyclical movement of the mind through a sequence of Chinese characters built around the heart radical, 心. The implied anatomical heart functions not as emotion, but as a field in which thought, desire, awareness, unwholesomeness, suffering, forgetting, and forbearance arise. Variations in weight, clarity, and erosion reflect the changing intensity and visibility of inner states.

“Whatever arises from the heart returns to the heart” frames the work as observation rather than conclusion. Mental states are presented not as a linear progression, but as recurring conditions within the same interior space.

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心始於相，想而生慾，落心成執，念而成結；
心失其通，是為惡，心與己非，則為悲；
照見殘念亡，亡而後忘，
如是，恕無所難。

Thoughts spring from form; desire follows.
Lingering awareness binds into knots, becoming unwholesome.
When the mind turns against itself, there is suffering.
As thought fades, forgetting comes.
Thus, forgiveness.