The Principle of Non-Action

I have already shared the story about how a monk's disciple came to him and said he was ready to do any work. To start, the monk suggested he plant carrots with the tops facing down.

It’s said that Seraphim of Sarov would daily move a pile of logs from one place to another. In India, this is called non-attachment to the results of one’s labor.

In my youth, I used to make a list of urgent tasks I needed to accomplish the next day.

My list gradually grew longer and longer. When it reached 40 items, I noticed that I began to feel tired and despondent, fearing that I wouldn’t be able to complete everything.

So, I threw out all the lists, deciding to see what would happen. And nothing changed. I didn’t even remember the things I didn’t need to do, while the rest were compelled by the situation itself.

In my understanding, action is tied to desires and goals, that is, to a consciousness that constantly returns to the goal.

The greater the attachment to the final result, the more we fear, worry, become resentful of those who hinder our actions, and fall into despair if we don’t succeed.

That’s why students were first offered to perform purposeless tasks. This eliminated the attachment to desires.

If an action is performed without attachment, it does not harm the soul and can be called non-action—meaning the action happens externally but not internally.

This allows one to maintain a sense of the Divine in the soul while engaging in any activity.

An interesting fact comes to mind. In a Jesuit school, there was a test for selecting the best students.

A young monk would be scheduled for an interview, say, at 9 a.m. He would arrive on time and wait. Five or ten minutes would pass, but no one would call him in.

An hour would go by, then another, then a third. And all this time, the monk was being quietly observed.

If the candidate showed the slightest signs of dissatisfaction or irritation, he was disqualified from being considered for an important position.

Someone who gets irritated, rushes, or worries cannot handle serious responsibilities.

Vikings used to give their warriors a drink made from fly agaric mushrooms before battle. Their minds remained clear, but fear and anxiety disappeared because their attachment to desires was diminished.

In India, the sacred drink «soma» also contained an infusion of fly agaric mushrooms along with milk.

Before battle, warriors were told: «You are already dead, so you cannot feel fear, hatred, or anxiety. Go and do your duty.»

The outer layers of consciousness and desires associated with the body were inhibited, while the inner, much deeper layers were revealed.

To engage in philosophy, one must perceive the hidden unity in everything happening in the world around them.

To feel this unity, one must access the subtle planes by detaching from the external.

This is why true philosophy has always been closely linked to mysticism and religion.

For the Western mind, the organ that produces the function is of importance.

For the Eastern mind, the function that creates the organ is what matters.

This is why Western philosophers are interested in how an organ is structured, while Eastern thinkers focus on how it functions and how it connects to other organs.

Thus, Western medicine treats the organ, while Eastern medicine aims to balance the functions of the entire organism and all its organs.

Although the contributions of both Western and Eastern medicine—and philosophy—are undeniable, the more we develop, the better we understand that seeing the unity of everything happening and treating the whole organism is much more promising than focusing on individual organs.

By the way, the question of whether the function or the organ comes first has, to some extent, already been addressed by Soviet psychologist Leontiev.

In his work, he describes this fact: when an organism finds itself in new conditions, several organs can work together to create a new function, which in turn leads to the formation of a new organ.

So, you could say that both statements are true. The function forms the organ, and then the organ performs the function.

For me, Eastern philosophy, in its strategic understanding of the world, represents the function, while Western philosophy and medicine represent the organ, working in a purely applied aspect.

The principle of non-action allows us to switch off the secondary function and return to the primary one—the one that existed before the organ, before the material world, back to when the world was a single, luminous point.

S. N. Lazarev, «Diagnosis of Karma, Book 9»