I don’t like to read esoteric literature as well as different philosophers. When I have a question, I am looking for answers in myself, meditating. I warn you about this, because a lot of people find this information source as not trustworthy.

I will say simply and briefly: I disagree with this.

I do not agree either with those who believe that De – it’s righteousness, nor with Mr. Lobusov, who deciphered the riddle of the eye and heart, as a “single-mindedness” and “righteousness.”

“Heart” in Taoist and Chan systems – is a source of our “self-observation,” that is, consciousness. The mind thinks, and consciousness monitors – two different functions. So no one ever said that you need to stop your thoughts. They taught that you just need to watch them.

When Hueynen, the future Sixth Patriarch of Chan, being a boy heard a sermon on the market of the Fifth Patriarch Hunzhen reading the “Diamond Sutra”, the only one words sank into his soul and turned his whole worldview. Now that spot in the Sutra is well known and translated word by word, which is meaningless, that always happens to scientists-pedants who do not understand the essence of the practice, and dealing just with verbalism only. This phrase sounds like: “Put your heart where everything is in perpetual motion”. The phrase was quite clear even to the uneducated boy, but it was a Chinese boy. And we need to decode, ie, to interpret.

In our culture is believed that consciousness is associated with our brains and is supposedly in the head. But the consciousness is not a part of a body – it is a function. And on the “East”, this function is assigned to the heart. Heart – is the consciousness. It observes. Therefore, the words “put the heart” means – “to direct the attention.”

Open heart – this is not a “good heart”, as many people think. It’s not about virtue. Open heart (to open your heart) means to be able to perceive, to observe. Locator of our perception – consciousness, which isn’t clouded with emotions, stress or phobias. Consciousness is clean and ready to catch all the signals, impartially, with no evaluation.

And here is the mind – it is porridge with the perpetual motion of conflicting thoughts. This constant rotation of the monads wheel yin-yang. Every moment in our minds some thoughts appear, and we do not agree with many of them, and are even deadly afraid of them. That’s why there is just pandemonium and hysteria in our mind.

But we aren’t – the mind or consciousness. These are just two of our functions. Therefore it is possible to activate one, so another is calmed down and stopped torturing herself. It is necessary to “transfer power” to consciousness, start utilizing it. Then the mind will lose its position and its exaggerated activity will begin to wane. There is the same recipe in all schools: “Put your heart where everything is in perpetual motion”. In other words – start watching (observing) your thoughts. 

Nothing else.

We train our ability to observe in any exercise (after all, we are observing something in each exercise). But the highest practice of observation – is observation of your “mind”: Chantzo. (In other schools, it is just another name for this exercise).

During this practice – as taught by Lao Tzu – if you can keep your heart impartial and contemplate without any changes (to stop worrying about your thoughts, phenomena, feelings, visions and without trying to modify them), then the mind stops. But what will help to be an impartial observer? What allows someone to be cool, even if it spitted in the face, and the other one without having this mental qualities – strikes with his fists if he was just looked askance? This force (it is a mental quality) was named Lao Tzu – De. And he called it the Good Power. Because it helps to be out of assessments, i.e. allows to continue be in a state of “pause”.

That’s it.

Egor Lobusov was right, when he realized, that it is all in the eye and heart. But he misread this puzzle. Eugene Tertychnyi was also right, when he metaphorically tried to explain that De – it is like a rod, around which the Yin and Yang revolves. The rod, which not allowing Yin and Yang to fly away, but he could not find a clear explanation of that image – no wonder that he didn’t understand.

Simply – De – this is the quality of our psyche, which allows it to be quiet, whatever happens, continue to be an observer and not slide into a participant of the events. And if the “power of De” is small, the person reacts to everything.

Therefore, they say that De is the good power that enables us to comprehend Tao; that the De is the key point in the practice, and if De is small, no matter how much someone will practice, it will only be worse. It is true; some people at beginning of practice are only experience exacerbation. It is because they have become more sensitive, they are now faced with a large number of signals, thoughts, feelings, sensations (locator of perceptions is trained in meditation), but the high reagent to these signals leads only to new exacerbations. Apparently, our Central Nervous System sees this and blocks the development of the resource, which is needed for further progress (chi), because it’s still bad for someone with “low level of De power”. Whereas if a person has a “high level of De power”, then it does not cost anything, even without any “energy gain” and many years of practice – the person is in a state of “pause”.

De – is the quality that ensures the possibility of being in quite states. The higher is De, the less is “the expansion of the yin-yang assessments”. The pendulum of the next pulse of our mind swung back (there was a thought), but the movement did not cause the response of our contradictory beings, “we are once again not reacted to the order violation”- and so the response didn’t pushed the pendulum back. Well, if you do not push that pendulum anymore, then he stops gradually. By itself.

In other words, the nervous man cannot calm down, and in his meditations it only gets worse.

So, De – it’s just the quality, the strength of our psyche, allowing us do not involve our clear untroubled observer, to be a person who can impartially observe without any assessments (eyes of our heart, our consciousness). Because if, “there is good, then immediately evil appears” (Lao Tzu). So, again the work of mind assessment begins, the “pause” – ends.

Good is Yang in relation to evil, which is yin and again the person of Tao falls in the darkness of things and subjective perceptions. He/she cannot understand that the “sky is devoid of humanity,” that all these allegations about right and wrong (good and evil) – again threw him/her out of the “pause” in the usual state of the dual perception.

I do not argue with the idea of ​​Mr. Lobusov that we shouldn’t be lying. But De has nothing to do with it. Hypothetically, if some person has a lot of De power, that person can lie as much as necessary, if needed (remember Gautama Buddha and his craftiness). But while such a man calmly looks at himself and lies, and he is not worried by anything. When a common man is lying and harming himself and his practice, his “conscience” and phobias, his stereotypes and ego – participate in the creation of the internal conflict, generating stress. It is bad for future practice; it’s just more hard work to do to become calm and relaxed. Of course, it’s easier to live with a clear conscience, do not do anything, which creates internal problems.

Also, for example, it is possible to emphasize that someone with “high level of De power”, if necessary, may abuse another person or not help drowning person. Because the power of De has nothing to do with morality. Morality – is evaluation, is a template, on which we stipulate what is good or bad. In general, the question is not how that man with “high level of De” will react. The fact is, that doesn’t matter how he will act, he would stay in the “eyes of the heart”, will be unfazed and internally stable in his unclouded perception. His “eye” will not close from such an act, his “heart” will not strain, because of it.

Once again, I just talked about De, but I did not say that you can be a bastard or a jerk. The problem of morality is also very important – but that’s a separate problem, that’s all.

Power of De, firstly is an innate quality.

But what about “training of De”?  I put a smiley face for those who are up to date.

But whatever it was, the development of “De power” is in any meditation 

What you train – you develop: consistently returning yourself to the process of meditation during the exercise, as soon as you noticed that you fell out of the observation (of training the mind) in thoughts (in conniving mind) – so constantly developing your consciousness and your De.