The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the principle wisdom text of the bhakti yoga tradition, tells a story about a great king named Mahārāja Parīkṣit.
The king was both a strong ruler and a wise philosopher. He was also the grandson of Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita, and, like his grandfather, a great devotee of Krishna.
Once, while touring his kingdom, he came upon the personality of Dharma in the form of a bull and the personality of Mother Earth in the form of a cow.
And he saw the personality of Kali-yuga — the iron age of violence and hypocrisy — in the form of a villain impersonating a king.
The villain, posing as a king, was attacking the bull and the cow with a club.
Mahārāja Parīkṣit immediately intervened and, speaking to the villain in a voice that sounded like thunder, said,
Then, speaking to Dharma, the bull who was the personification of moral principles, Mahārāja Parīkṣit declared,
This story illustrates how the first and foremost duty of a government is to provide protection.
More specifically, it suggests that heads of state have a duty to defend moral standards, care for the source of our sustenance — the Earth, and protect innocent people from violent criminals, especially criminals in the guise of authority figures.
This story is particularly relevant to considerations about how a government should respond when people come from another country with a legitimate need for asylum.
My first impulse is to think that the leaders of a country to which an asylum seeker has fled to escape persecution in their home country has an obligation to provide them with a safe haven.
Am I objectively correct or is this just my subjective opinion? Is it really as simple as it sounds or are there competing moral considerations to be balanced that I haven’t taken into account?
I’m not so much second-guessing myself here as I am interrogating my assumptions to make sure that my conclusion is based on something more substantial than my opinion. In yoga philosophy, opinion is considered to be the lowest form of knowledge and an unequivocal defense of an opinion is a lesser form of discourse than a genuine search for truth, which requires corroboration from a source of knowledge beyond the limitations of my own reasoning.
In a search for the truth, we can ask, “Do political leaders have special obligations to a particular community that take priority over the duty to protect someone from outside that community who comes to them for shelter?”
Bhakti-yoga philosophy says that dharma is relational: different relationships call for different responsibilities. For example, a parent has special obligations to their children, a guru has special obligations to their disciples, a king has special obligations to the citizens of his kingdom, etc. In this sense, bhakti is not especially egalitarian.
However, bhakti begins from a metaphysical premise that’s radically different from modern conceptions of national, religious, racial, or gender identity, namely, that we are eternal spiritual beings, not these temporary material bodies.
So when it comes to providing shelter, bhakti doesn’t ask, “Who is closest to me” or “With whom do I share a temporary material identity?”
It only asks, “Who has sought shelter?”
Yoga wisdom literature provides another clear example of this in the Ramayana. When Vibhīṣaṇa, the brother of the great demon, Rāvaṇa, seeks refuge with Rāma, the incarnation of Vishnu who appears as an ideal king, many of Rāma’s advisers object They see Vibhīṣaṇa as an outsider, a foreigner, a potential enemy, and a security risk.
Rāma’s response: “Anyone who sincerely comes to me for shelter must be protected.” Period. The end. The decisive criterion for Rāma is not tribal membership; it’s the sincere request for shelter.
Circling back to the story of Mahārāja Parīkṣit, we see that the saintly impulse to provide protection isn’t just a matter of passively accepting those who seek shelter; it’s expansive and proactive: the king not only takes the initiative to offer shelter and protection to those with a clear need, he’s prepared to eliminate the threat, even to the point of killing the perpetrator if needed.
This is the real flip-side of ahimsa, the yogic principle of non-harming: ahimsa is not just passively refraining from causing harm to others; it’s actively preventing harm to others, taking the initiative to defend those who are being harmed and protecting those who are being threatened with harm.
As it turned out, Mahārāja Parīkṣit didn’t kill the personality of Kali.
Mahārāja Parīkṣit thus gives us a clear indication of who is not qualified to act as a chief executive.
Bhakti wisdom literature consistently praises rulers who protect not just their own subjects but anyone who seeks shelter.
Therefore, we can safely conclude that bhakti wisdom recognizes concentric circles of responsibility, but it does not recognize concentric circles of human worth, nor does it support the idea that there is a moral justification for giving protection to those in one’s inner circles at the expense of those in the outer circles. To rationalize denying protection to those in the outer circle, what to speak of intentionally putting them in harm’s way, is to be denounced as a false form of morality.
So, in this case, it would appear that bhakti wisdom corroborates my first impulse: the leaders of a country to which an asylum seeker has fled has an obligation to provide them with a safe haven.
May all those who bravely defend the defenseless be protected themselves. May criminals posing as kings, who visit violence on the innocent in the name of false morality, be driven out of the kingdom.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k