Follow Your Heart (kokoro no mama)

Follow Your Heart in Japanese is 心の儘 which is read kokoro no mama

心の儘 (kokoro no mama): as the heart wills; following one's own heart. 心 (kokoro) is the heart and the mind together, の (no) joins it to 儘 (mama), the state as it is, so the phrase is the heart, just as it is, the condition of doing as one's heart directs; the dictionaries head it as just as one thinks, at one's own discretion, to one's heart's content. It is the one classical phrase on this shelf and reads as one: it is in the oldest Japanese tale, where a suitor cannot press the moon princess as he wishes, and in the Tale of Genji. Freedom is its sense, and in the old chronicles sometimes license, a lord doing as he pleased, which is the edge a reader should know; follow your heart has the sense right, with the difference that the Japanese describes the state where the English gives the instruction. 儘 is the full form of the character; the dictionaries write the word in kana and older print often writes 侭, and all three are one word.

kokoro no mama reminds us to be true to ourselves and to follow our heart.