Fire of EthicsHome › Dedication
Who this programme is dedicated toTo Yulia
1983–2025
“Fire of Ethics” is dedicated to my wife Yulia. She died on 17 September 2025. This page is not a monument and not a request for sympathy. It says where the programme came from and what we do one day a year.
Why a dedication
Yulia did not run this practice and did not write these texts. She was neither a teacher nor a model to follow — she was a living person, with a temper, with hard days, and with a rare gift for making a day calm. I will not turn her into a symbol: that would be untrue, and untruth is a poor foundation for a programme about honesty.
The dedication is for something else. Everything described on this site — the pause instead of the answer, the minimum for a hard day, three lines in the evening, one small deed for someone else — was not assembled out of books. It came together over the year that began on 17 September 2025, because I had to get up in the mornings and be a steady father to two girls when nothing inside was steady. The programme grew out of that year. The year began with her. That is why her name stands at the foundation and not on the cover.
The Day of the Quiet Deed — 17 September
A dedication that does nothing is just an inscription. So it has a form: one day a year on which participants and leaders do one quiet deed for another person and write one line of contribution in the evening. That is all.
The deed is quiet and concrete
Call the person you have not called in a long time. Give someone a lift. Fix something. Sit beside someone in silence. Take over a boring duty of theirs for one evening. Not a post on social media, not a repost, not “light a candle”.
The recipient is a living person
Someone who is having a harder time than you right now and did not ask for help. Not an organisation, not abstract humanity, not “all the people of the world”.
Not a single coin
No collections, no donations “in memory of”, no charity accounts, no reporting. This programme collects no money on any day — including this one.
Nothing compulsory
Taking part is not recorded and not checked. Skipping is fine, as everything here is. Nobody will write to ask whether you did it.
It is not a day of mourning
You do not have to grieve on schedule or for company. If the day feels light to you, let it be light. The deed is done not out of heaviness but instead of it.
Your own date works too
If you have a date of your own like this, do the quiet deed on it. The point is not 17 September; the point is that memory is turned into an act.
Why an act rather than an inscription. Because the tradition on which this course stands treats the departed with surprising sobriety: it asks not for prolonged sorrow but for something done in the name of the one who is gone — and it warns of exactly two mistakes, speaking ill of the departed and forgetting them. It forbids tears to no one, and certainly not to children.
Where this comes from (a spoiler for Day 15)
Living Ethics (Agni Yoga), the book “Supermundane”, §354: “We will not grieve over an illusory loss, for we know that the close one lives and is nearby… Even in earthly custom people try to do something joyful in the name of the absent one.” And, in closing: “Let us send the departed a smile of love.”
There is no prescribed anniversary rite in these books at all — no requiem, no memorial feast; there is an attitude and there is a deed. The Day of the Quiet Deed is our form, not the source’s, and we say so plainly. The texts are open to everyone: agniyoga.org.
If you have lost someone too
Four things I can say honestly, because I tested them rather than read them.
- A steady day holds better than strong words. The morning phrase and the evening fact take two minutes and work on the day when nothing else works.
- One small deed for another person pulls you out of the pit faster than talking about the pit. That is not wisdom, it is mechanics.
- Children need permission for tears and permission for laughter — on the same day. An adult gives both, out loud.
- Memory holds on to the concrete: a habit, a phrase, a quality of character. “She was wonderful” holds on to nothing.
This is a practice of attention and behaviour, not medical care and not psychotherapy: in heavy grief it neither replaces nor cancels them — see the rules of participation. If you feel so bad right now that it frightens you, see a professional; that is a normal, adult step.