According to our friends at Merriam-Webster, yesterday’s Word of the Day was “senescence.”
Senescence is a word that refers to the state of being old or the process of becoming old.
It’s related to words like senior and senile. It’s also connected to ancient Rome and the Latin word for the council of elders, the Senatus, which acted as an advisory body on administrative, financial, military, and foreign policy matters of great importance to the Roman Republic.
This may explain why the United States Senate has a senescence problem, which, in turn, may explain why they’re incapable of performing their constitutionally-mandated job of making sure the President doesn’t launch a major military strike against another country without their approval.
Which brings us to today’s Word of the Day, according to me: “suzerainty.”
Suzerainty means “a position of control by a sovereign or state over another state that is internally autonomous.” (Emphasis added).
It’s an obscure but useful word: it distinguishes benevolent superiority from imperial domination.
This is an important distinction for yoga teachers and spiritual seekers because the Vedic literature of the yoga wisdom tradition frequently describes the exploits of righteous monarchs who “conquer” surrounding provinces.
Such stories don’t describe a precise equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the United States should have exclusionary hemispheric control backed by coercive power — because that’s not how dharmic suzerainty works.
How does it work? A good example appears in the Fourth Canto of the Srimad Bhgavatam (SB 4.15-23), wherein a saintly monarch, Mahārāja Pṛthu, is described as a cakravartī—a universal ruler. His “conquest” of “the world” consists of
- upholding dharma (alignment with principles of cosmic order),
- ensuring proper taxation (everyone pays their fair share: no oligarchs, no kleptocracy, etc.),
- protecting the citizens (everyone residing within the realm is considered a citizen),
- compelling neighboring rulers to acknowledge his authority
Neighboring rulers were not compelled to acknowledge Mahārāja Pṛthu by force; they voluntarily submitted because Mahārāja Pṛthu was a compelling embodiment of righteous rulership. They knew that their own kingdoms would prosper under Pṛthu’s protection and that resistance would place them in opposition to dharma (the Vedic model assumes shared values and interests between superior and subordinate rulers).
In this system, once voluntary submission is offered and accepted, local rulers retain autonomy, governance continues locally, and no standing occupation follows.
The same goes for involuntary submission in the event that a local ruler stands in opposition to dharma and goes down fighting.
According to the yoga wisdom tradition, powerful leaders don’t annex territories, don’t establish puppet governments to do their bidding, and don’t steal other country’s natural resources; they establish a moral hierarchy of governance based on the promotion of human welfare, magnanimity, chivalry, and truthfulness.
This provides us with a template for spiritually-informed political leadership. It also offers us a clear distinction between unilateral geopolitical dominance by force and rājasūya: consensual recognition of moral leadership that produces international networks of allied, locally autonomous states that recognize a central dharmic authority.
Now, here’s the tricky part: the social component of yoga philosophy looks like it aligns with Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST), which argues that the international system is more stable when a single, dominant state (hegemon) exists to create and enforce rules of international order and provide for the public good.
If this sounds like a theory any power-hungry autocrat would love, it’s because it is: in kali-yuga — the Iron Age of Quarrel and Hypocrisy — there’s no way that this is gonna work.
And this is where the details are really important: a hegemonic international order under the leadership of nationalistic imperialist criminals imposes zero-sum subordination by military threat; the same idea implemented under the leadership of honest dharmic sovereigns inspires mutually beneficial cooperation by moral example.
The bottom line is that Dharmic Stability Theory (DST — yeah, I made it up) supports hierarchy without humiliation, power without exploitation, and central authority without imperialism. It establishes protection as the core sovereign duty, calls for force only as the last resort, and requires action, even action taken against a bad actor, to observe ethical principle of respect for the law.
Yesterday afternoon’s New York Times headline said, “Trump says U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela,” whatever that means.
It may be a sign of senescence. It’s definitely not a declaration of suzerainty.
Now might be a good time to call your senescent senators and tell them about Mahārāja Pṛthu.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k