If you put your hand up to your heart, you can feel it beating steadily. It does not beat because you are thinking about making it beat. Nor does it beat because of physiological or medical definitions. The hypothalamus regulates your heartbeat, for example, but it is not the cause of your heart’s activity. As long as your heart is actually beating inside you, it is the reality of your life. A power beyond words and ideas is at work. It is this reality of your life, of your birth and death, not definitions of them, that I want to investigate here.
