2 Chronicles 6:30 · World English Bible
then hear from heaven your dwelling place and forgive, and render to every man according to all his ways, whose heart you know (for you, even you only, know the hearts of the children of men)
Citta: Heart Citta names the knowing mind, which is what the heart God reads amounts to here. Solomon, hands spread toward heaven at the temple he has just finished, asks about the place conduct starts rather than conduct itself.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
BUDDHISM
Citta: Heart Citta names the knowing mind, which is what the heart God reads amounts to here. Solomon, hands spread toward heaven at the temple he has just finished, asks about the place conduct starts rather than conduct itself. The heart is the mind in the act of leaning toward something, and that leaning shapes everything the hands go on to do.
Cetanā: Intention Cetanā is the volition that makes a deed a deed. Two men can carry the same offering up to that temple, one to be seen and one out of gratitude, and only a reader of hearts can tell their ways apart. Rendering according to all his ways has to mean the whole of an act, the aim inside it along with the shape it took.
Kammassakatā: Owning One's Deeds Kammassakatā is the principle that beings inherit what they do. Rendering to every man according to his ways works like a harvest coming up from what he planted, each field yielding its own crop. Solomon asks God to do this accurately, and the accuracy is already built into the way deeds ripen.
Cetopariyañāṇa: Knowing Another's Mind Cetopariyañāṇa is the capacity to encompass another mind and see its condition directly. "You, even you only, know the hearts" claims for God what the Pali texts treat as a rare attainment, likened to leaning over a bowl of clear water and seeing plainly whether your face is smudged. The prayer depends on it: a verdict on a heart is worth nothing unless the one giving it can see the heart.
Khamā: Forgiveness Khamā is pardon asked for and granted between two parties, spoken aloud in the monks' practice. Solomon puts forgiving and rendering according to a man's ways in one breath, and both can stand: pardon settles the debt held between the parties, while the deed goes on ripening in the one who did it. Being forgiven lifts what is owed, and it leaves untouched the person his own actions have already made him.
SUFISM
The prayer leans on a fact that should quiet every pretense: God alone reads the heart, so the mask worn for others buys nothing before Him. The disease is the double life, one face for the crowd and another underneath. The cure is to bring the hidden face into His light and ask for mercy there.
He is the sole knower of what no eye reaches, the light that falls inside the closed room. To be seen that completely and still be offered forgiveness is the safest place a heart can stand.
Buddhism lens
What did you do today that would look different if someone could see the reason behind it?
Krishna tells Arjuna to act with full attention to the act and release the grip on what it earns him, because the aim inside the deed is the part that shapes the doer. The same outward action done for applause and done for love are not the same action.
The sages warned to know what is above you, an eye that sees and an ear that hears, and all your deeds written in a book. The point is not surveillance but that the inside of what you do is never actually private.
Zhuangzi laughed at people who perform goodness for the look of it, saying the true thing done from the heart leaves no trace and asks for no witness. What is forced shows, even when it is done correctly.
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