I think Rosemary does this towards the end of the regular retreat. "When westerners think of the mind they think of the head, when the Thais think of the mind they point here (..to the heart)." As far as Buddhism goes, mind is not the brain. The brain is up here, OK, that's a physical thing, you've seen pictures of it I'm sure, it looks a bit funny. It's a physical matter, and it has networks of nerves and all sorts of things, and supposedly it is what creates our thinking ability, it is all up there. It can think, it can process, it can dictate orders to our mouth so we speak right, orders to our feet so we walk right. That is the purpose of the brain.
The mind is something different. We tend to think that the mind lives up there, especially right behind our eyes, we live right behind our eyes. Now it is interesting, if you ever talk to someone who is blind, they don't live right behind their eyes. They live near their ears, their hands and their skin. They mainly live at a different sense door. So, they actually don't think of themselves as living right behind their eyes. That is very interesting to consider. Mind is something that goes accordingly to where we are focusing our attention.
Consciousness is perhaps the closest word that would correlate to "mind", as far as Buddhist terminology goes. Consciousness exists at every sense door when it is the predominate sense door. So, for me right now my predominate sense door is my speech, my eyes and knowing that I am moving my head and my hand. It is an alternating consciousness, it is actually very coordinated, moving all around the place. We can do that as a human being, we have a consciousness that is coordinated and it moves in different places. So, consciousness is not something that is fixed but it is something that goes according to the sense door.
Now, when the Thais point here (at the heart), "heart-mind" is the best translation we use in English, sometimes they don't use the same word as the consciousness that I am using. Because the word I am now using for consciousness is more Vinnana (one of the five aggregates), and it is a moving consciousness. Then there is another word, Citta in Pali. Citta is generally what this thing "heart-mind" is, but this is something that is not possible for me to explain because it is theoretical in a sense. I have a certain amount of understanding regarding it, but it may just be a personal thing, it may not actually be absolutely true. So, the word Citta for me is not possible to fully explain.