The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring

by David Michie

  Serena remained silent before he told her, “Says she’s always wanted to go to K-K-Kathmandu. A volunteering job has come up there. She doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t just walk away from the bookstore to go with her.”

  Serena pursed her lips. “Difficult.”

  Sam sighed deeply. “The job or my girlfriend. Great choice.”

  There was no one in the bookstore by now, and only one table of diners remained in the café—four regulars idling over the remnants of their crème brûlée and coffee. With Kusali still on duty, neither Serena nor Sam was paying much attention to what was happening beyond their table, which was why they were caught completely off guard by the arrival of a visitor who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. As Franc’s teacher and self-appointed adviser to Sam, he was no stranger to the café, but he hadn’t been seen here in quite a while. This visitor only came here for a specific purpose.

  Sensing a movement on the stairs to the bookstore, Sam looked up to see him standing at the end of their table. “Geshe Wangpo!” he exclaimed, wide-eyed.

  Sam and Serena both started to get to their feet.

  “Stay!” Geshe Wangpo commanded, palms facing toward them both. “I am here only for a short time, yes?” He perched on the armrest of Sam’s sofa.

  Geshe Wangpo was powerfully commanding, and his mere presence was enough to subdue everyone present into a state of meek compliance. As Serena made eye contact with Sam, Geshe Wangpo told them, “It is necessary to practice equanimity. When the mind is too much up and down there can be no happiness, no peace. This is not useful for self and”—he glanced pointedly at Serena—“not useful for others.”

  After Serena glanced down, I felt the force of Geshe Wangpo’s gaze turn toward me, and it was as though I was an open book to him. He seemed to know exactly how I had felt about Venerable Monkey Face and the Cat Strangler. How I’d taken refuge in the café, frightened to return to Jokhang. How my usually boundless self-confidence had deserted me. As I gazed up at him, I sensed that he knew me as well as I knew myself.

  Then Sam seemed to feel exposed and nodded ruefully. There could be no hiding from the self-evident truth.

  After a moment, Serena spoke. “The problem is how.”

  “How?”

  “It’s so hard to stay level, to practice equanimity,” Serena said, “when there’s so much … stuff happening.”

  “Four tools,” Geshe Wangpo said, looking at us each in turn. “First: impermanence. Never forget: this, too, will pass. The only thing you know for sure is that however things are now, they will change. If you feel bad now, no problem. Later you will feel better. You know this is true. It has always been true, correct? And it is still true now.”

  They were nodding.

  “Second: what is the point of worrying? If you can do something about it, fix it. If not, what is the point of worrying about it? Let go! Every minute you spend worrying, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. Don’t allow your thoughts to be like thieves, stealing your own contentment.

  “Third: don’t judge. When you say ‘This is a bad thing that’s happening,’ how often are you wrong? Losing a job may be exactly what you need to start a more fulfilling career. The end of a relationship may open more possibilities than you even know exist. When it happens you think bad. Later you may think the best thing that ever happened. So don’t judge, no matter how bad it seems at the time. You may be completely wrong.”

  Serena, Sam, and I stared at Geshe Wangpo, transfixed. In that moment he seemed like the Buddha himself, appearing directly in our midst to tell us exactly what we most needed to hear.

  “Fourth: no swamp, no lotus. The most transcendent of flowers grows out of the filth of the swamp. Suffering is like the swamp. If it makes us more humble, more able to sympathize with others and more open to them, then we become capable of transformation and of becoming truly beautiful, like the lotus.

  “Of course”—Geshe Wangpo rose from the armrest, having delivered his message—“I speak only of things on the surface of the ocean, the winds and storms that we all endure. But never forget”—he leaned across the table, touching his heart with his right hand—“deep down, under the surface, all is well. Mind is always pristine, boundless, radiant. The more you dwell in that place, the easier it will be to deal with temporary, surface things.”

  Geshe Wangpo was communicating with more than words. He was also showing us their meaning. In that moment the deep-down, all-is-well-ness of which he spoke had a palpable reality. Then he left, as noiselessly and unnoticed as when he had arrived.

  For a while Serena and Sam sat back in the sofas, stunned by what had just happened.

  Sam was the first to speak. “That was … pretty amazing. The way he just appeared.”

  Serena nodded with a smile.

  “Seems he knows exactly what’s going on in your mind,” Sam continued.

  “And not only when you’re with him,” Serena added.

  Sam met her eyes for a long while, sharing her amazement.

  “What he said was so right though,” she said, smiling. She seemed to be acknowledging that a cloud had lifted.

  Sam nodded. “Irritatingly so.”

  They both chuckled.

  Kusali opened the front door, and an evening breeze rippled through the café. Over by the window, the last table of diners was preparing to leave.

  I reflected on the significance of what Geshe Wangpo had said. Enduring happiness was only possible with equanimity. As long as our happiness depended on circumstances, it would be as fleeting and unreliable as the events themselves. Like wisps of discarded cat hair borne on the wind, our emotions would be tossed this way and that by forces quite beyond our control.

  The tools for cultivating equanimity required no leap of faith. As Geshe Wangpo had explained them, they were self-evident. But at its heart, the essence of equanimity was familiarity with the nature of mind itself, something I knew must be developed through the practice of meditation. Geshe Wangpo had evidently mastered the practice. That much was apparent in the way the minds of others were so transparent to him—a natural consequence of his own mind being free of obscurations.

  It was some time before Serena noticed. She looked quickly from Sam’s face to the sofa, then beneath the table, then across to the basket under the counter.

  “The dogs!” she exclaimed.

  Sam sat up with a jolt, asking anxiously, “Where are they?”

  Both of them stood and surveyed the café and bookstore.

  And then Serena spotted them lying on the pavement, just outside the café door. Never in all our end-of-the-day sessions had Marcel and Kyi Kyi abandoned the sofa and the possibility of a tummy rub. Never had they gone out into the darkness at the end of the night. It just didn’t happen.

  Serena exchanged a look with Sam.

  “They know,” she said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Indeed they did.

  A short while later, Serena was tallying up the night’s receipts, having waved goodnight to the last table of diners. Behind the bookstore counter, Sam was doing the same. Kusali was putting the finishing touches on the café in readiness for tomorrow’s breakfast. Having made my way down from the book section, I was about to amble home.

  There was a sudden commotion outside, and we all looked toward the door. A large, white taxi had pulled up beside the café, its lights ablaze. Someone was climbing out of the backseat. Marcel and Kyi Kyi were yapping crazily, jumping up at the figure in black jeans and a sweatshirt. Even before he turned, we knew exactly who it was.

  He bent to take one dog in each arm. The barking abruptly stopped, replaced by a frenzy of snuffling, whimpering, and face licking. Franc threw back his head and laughed with joy.

  When he stepped into the café, he looked from Serena to Sam to Kusali to me.

  “I’ve come straight from Delhi. I made the cabdriver come past the café. When I saw the lights were on …” He didn’t need to explain, as he clutched the two
squirming dogs with delight.

  Serena was the first to approach him. “Welcome home!” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek.

  Franc put the dogs on the floor. They immediately hurtled up the steps as Sam was coming down, before racing back to Franc, then out the door onto the sidewalk, then back inside again.

  “Great to have you back!” Sam greeted him with a handshake followed by a bear hug.

  A short distance away, Kusali folded his palms at his heart and bowed deeply. Franc reciprocated, holding the headwaiter’s gaze all the while. “Namaste, Kusali.”

  “Namaste, sir.”

  Then Franc came over to where I was sitting and took me in his arms. “Little Rinpoche,” he said, kissing me on the neck. “I’m so glad you, too, are here. It wouldn’t have been the same without you.”

  I snuggled into his arm.

  Sam looked down at where the two dogs were still racing around in circles like crazy things. “I know I didn’t say anything about returning,” Franc told Sam and Serena. “That’s because for the next little while I want you to carry on doing what you’re doing.”

  “You think you could stay away from here?” Serena said with a smile, betraying none of the anxiety she was feeling.

  “Oh, I’ll be stopping by for coffee or lunch. But full-time manager?” He was shaking his head. “I’m not in any big hurry. One of the things that going through this whole experience with Dad made me realize is that I want to make the most of being here in McLeod Ganj with all these great teachers. Life is short. I don’t want to spend all of it running a restaurant.”

  The three humans and I were listening intently.

  “If you weren’t going back to Europe”—he looked over at Serena—“I’d be trying to persuade you to stay on and job-share with me.”

  “That’s an idea.” Sam glanced over at Serena with a grin.

  Serena raised her eyebrows. “You’d trust my judgment?”

  Franc beamed. “Why wouldn’t I? We’ve never had such great financials as we’ve had since the two of you began running the show. Everyone seems better off without me.”

  He cocked his head, looking at the dogs. “Hopefully not everyone.”

  Serena and Sam exchanged a meaningful glance.

  “It’s just …” began Serena at the same time that Sam said, “When we …”

  Both stopped.

  “What?” Franc looked from one to the other.

  “The curry nights,” Serena managed, only moments before Sam said, “Spice packs.”

  “Exactly!” Franc’s eyes gleamed.

  “But we thought …” began Serena.

  “Your e-mail said …” continued Sam.

  “… that you didn’t like the idea,” Serena finished.

  Franc frowned. “Last month’s accounts?”

  As they nodded, faces grave, he said, “I remember exactly what I wrote: I DON’T LIKE. I LOVE!”

  Sam was suddenly besieged with emotion. “The bottom of the page must have been cut off!” He looked at Serena in abject apology. “We only got the first bit.”

  But Serena didn’t care. Rapturous, she grabbed Franc and hugged him. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me!”

  The next morning after breakfast, I emerged tentatively from the suite I shared with His Holiness and tiptoed down the corridor that led past the executive assistants’ office. I was prepared to scamper back to my safe haven at the first sign of the Cat Strangler. Instead I heard Tenzin and Lobsang discussing some new development. Ever curious, I padded into the office.

  “… completely by surprise,” Tenzin was saying, before catching sight of me.

  They greeted me in chorus: “Good morning, HHC.”

  I made my way over and rubbed first against Lobsang’s legs, then Tenzin’s.

  “The thing is, he gets back in three days and has a very busy schedule from the moment he returns,” Tenzin said, resuming their conversation. He reached down for a moment to stroke me. “You hear that, HHC? In three days your favorite staff member will be bringing His Holiness back to us.”

  Although I arched my back in appreciation of his affection, the news that His Holiness’s driver would be back at Jokhang thrilled me not one bit. I prided myself on being a cat of many names, but the name bestowed on me by this coarse fellow was shameful. It was one he had given me at the moment my very worst instincts had been provoked and I had brought a comatose mouse into Jokhang. Dear reader, can you believe what he named me, me? Mousie Tung!

  “His Holiness knows what trouble we’ve been having finding someone for the job,” said Tenzin. “With the ones we’ve short listed so far there has been a problem with skills or temperament, which is why he suggested this short-term solution.”

  I was greatly relieved. By the sounds of it, Chogyal’s position was not going to be usurped by the Venerable Monkey Face. Nor would I have to flee past the executive assistants’ office every day to escape the attention of the Cat Strangler.

  “So when are you expecting your temp to arrive?” Lobsang asked.

  Tenzin glanced at his watch. “Any minute. I just sent Tashi and Sashi to collect him.”

  Lobsang nodded. Glancing at the computer, he asked, “What about his IT skills?”

  Tenzin shrugged. “I’m not sure he’s even used a mobile phone before.”

  “On the other hand, being able to read people’s minds certainly is an advantage,” Lobsang observed.

  They laughed before Tenzin said, “Some of His Holiness’s decisions can seem strange at the time. But I have come to discover that very often, all is not as it seems.”

  A short while later Lobsang returned to his office, and I occupied my perch atop the filing cabinet. There was a flurry of small, bare feet on the corridor outside, accompanied by boyish voices. Then, without any detectable noise or movement, Yogi Tarchin appeared in the office. Just like the time I’d seen him at the Cartwrights’, he was dressed in clothing that looked as though it came from a distant era, his robes a faded red brocade. There was a whiff of incense and cedar about him.

  Tenzin rose to his feet. “Thank you so much for coming,” he said, bowing deeply.

  “It is my privilege to be able to serve His Holiness,” Yogi Tarchin said, returning the bow. “My skills are few, but I am willing.”

  Tenzin gestured to the chair where Chogyal used to sit, before returning to his desk, so that they were facing each other.

  “His Holiness holds you in the highest regard,” Tenzin told Yogi Tarchin. “In particular he would greatly value your help with several sensitive monastic appointments he needs to make on his return.”

  I remembered how difficult Chogyal used to find these decisions. Monastic politics could be highly complex, and matters like scriptural authority, personality, and lineage had to be finely balanced.

  But Yogi Tarchin merely chuckled. It was a laugh that instantly reminded me of someone else—His Holiness himself! It seemed to suggest that whatever the apparent gravity of a decision, when viewed from a perspective of abiding bliss and timelessness, it could be lightly worn.

  “Oh, yes,” said Yogi Tarchin. “When decisions are made for the good of all, they are easy. But if there is ego—quite difficult!”

  Sitting opposite him, Tenzin seemed to be responding to the yogi’s relaxed presence. I noticed him leaning farther back in his seat than usual, and his shoulders were less stiff.

  “We do a fair amount of correspondence on the computer,” Tenzin said, gesturing toward Chogyal’s screen. “We can get someone to help you with the technical side.”

  “Very good,” Yogi Tarchin said, swiveling the desk chair so he faced the screen, then grabbing the mouse and, with the ease of familiarity, flicking it about a few times. “Before my last retreat I used Microsoft Office. And who doesn’t have an e-mail account? But no, apart from that, I’m not very computer literate.”

  Tenzin’s expression was one of amazement. No doubt he was realizing that one should never be too quick to
judge the capabilities of a yogi. After all, a mind that could penetrate the subtlest truths about the nature of reality was more than capable of creating a Word document.

  As I adjusted my position on the filing cabinet, Yogi Tarchin looked up from his screen. “Oh—Little Sister!” he exclaimed, getting up from his chair and coming over to stroke me with great tenderness.

  “That is His Holiness’s Cat, otherwise known as HHC,” explained Tenzin.

  “I know. We have already met.”

  “Why Little Sister?”

  “Just a name. She is my little Dharma sister,” said Yogi Tarchin.

  But both of us knew that he was making a reference to my relationship with Serena, the meaning of which was no clearer to me now than it had been when he had first said it. But it seemed, in that moment, that we now shared a secret, an understanding, the truth of which would be revealed in the fullness of time.

  After Yogi Tarchin had returned to his desk, Tenzin glanced up at me and smiled. “I think you are friends,” he observed.

  Yogi Tarchin nodded. “For many lifetimes.”

  I noticed the difference the moment I stepped into the Himalaya Book Café: the basket under the counter was vacant. For the first time in my memory the café was canine free. I paused, more out of surprise than anything else. Strange though this confession may seem, for a moment I was actually quite disappointed. While Franc was away, the dogs and I had become good friends. But then I remembered Franc’s surprise appearance the night before—how ecstatic the dogs had been to see him—and I was happy for them. No doubt they were back at home with Franc right now; all was well in their world.

  That was how it felt inside the café, too. Last night’s visit from Franc may have lasted only ten minutes, but it had the same effect as a breaking thunderstorm. All the tension that had been building during the previous days had been released in a single, cathartic moment. Serena was walking with a fresh spring in her step. Sam was bustling about, arranging a new, permanent display of spice packs. There even seemed to be a buzz among the waitstaff. No question, things were on an upswing at the Himalaya Book Café. And there was one person, more than any other, with whom Serena wanted to share the good news.