Quick summary: Classical yoga texts treat ethics as inseparable from practice, and the story of King Bharata shows how compassion for animals sits at the heart of that tradition. Whether or not readers accept reincarnation, the parable challenges the assumption that animals exist mainly for human use, which matters as industrial farming and environmental crises push societies to reconsider their policies and habits. For anyone using yoga to support well-being, the practical lesson is that moving towards non-harm can make the practice more humane as well as more healthful.

Modern yoga is often associated with physical well-being, yet the classical traditions placed equal emphasis on ethics. Spanning thousands of years, ancient Indian yoga literature presents yoga as far more than a system of physical practice. It is a comprehensive ethical, psychological and spiritual discipline, one that frequently extends moral concern beyond human beings to other living creatures. Its texts contain many parables that remain relevant today.

In yoga literature and philosophy, the transmigration of the “soul” (atma or purusha) is largely taken for granted, as is the idea that how we think and act in this life sets the stage for the next. We might prefer to assume that our next life will be a human one, but one of my favourite stories, from the Bhagavata Purana, warns that there is no such guarantee.

A king named Bharata, weary of the endless political complexities of royal life, retreats alone to the forest in search of peace. While seated in padmasana, the classic cross-legged posture designed for meditation, he finds himself called upon to care for an orphaned fawn. After a few weeks of tending the charming creature, Bharata unexpectedly dies and is reborn as a deer.

Bharata remembers his previous life as a human striving to practise yoga. Resolving to make the most of his life as a deer, he lives out his days close to a yoga hermitage, where the peaceful, meditative atmosphere shapes his next birth. Once again a human being, he is more determined than ever to perfect the practice he began two lives before.

Having experienced it for himself, Bharata is now acutely aware that nonhuman animals such as deer are sentient beings like him, and this awareness gets him into trouble. Born as a labourer, he is drafted into the service of a local chieftain, a rather self-important man who has no patience for Bharata’s irregular pace as a member of the palanquin-carrying team. The ants are the problem. Bharata refuses to step on them, and the result is a shaky ride for the royal passenger. Yet Bharata proves a sharp and effective teacher, and he shares his hard-won wisdom so powerfully that the chieftain becomes eager to be enlightened by this unlikely labourer.

Whether or not we believe in reincarnation, stories like Bharata’s invite us to reconsider how humans relate to other sentient beings. I wonder whether we, as a species, have grown overly complacent about our place in the world. At a time when industrial farming and environmental crises are forcing societies to rethink humanity’s relationship with animals, perhaps we should no longer take it for granted that animals exist primarily for human consumption.

Regular postural (asana) practice does wonders for the body, but yoga can also stretch the imagination, beginning with the moral imagination. This is why I find narratives such as Bharata’s multi-life journey, from king to yogi to deer to humble labourer, so compelling. They invite us to imagine a world shaped by compassion rather than domination, where reducing harm to animals becomes part of our moral instinct, and where many more Bharatas, enlightened sages, capture the imagination of our leaders and inspire the rest of us to become models of ahimsa, the principle of non-harm toward living beings.

Bharata’s story, and his ability to transform a chieftain through enlightened words, can inspire us to envision non-harm as our default moral code, with animals no longer treated chiefly as a source of food. Such a vision could open the world to real nourishment for the soul, a world of abundance for all beings, in this life and the next.

Increasingly, I find that centuries-old yoga texts feel less like ancient tales and more like contemporary moral counselling. Yoga can help us become healthier, and it can also help us become more humane.

Kenneth Valpey is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the author of “Yoga and Animal Ethics“.