by David Michie
As she pushed back in her seat to avoid me, the shock etched on her features could not have been more stark.
But she was no more shaken, dear reader, than me. I hadn’t been expecting anyone on the sofa, let alone a TV celebrity, nor one who was mid-interview. As I headed toward the opposite end of the sofa, for the first time I observed the lighting. The cameras. The crew watching the action from the shadows. By the time I landed, all the demonic energy that had propelled me from the other end of the sofa was gone.
I was, no longer, a Snow Lion possessed.
She looked at me. I looked at her. Both of us were taking in what had just happened. It was only then that I remembered conversations in the executive assistants’ office during recent weeks about her expected visit. As a feline of considerable experience in diplomatic circles, I am not one to name-drop about the Dalai Lama’s visitors. Let me just say that the woman concerned was an American of Greek descent. One who founded an online media outlet that went on to become one of the fastest growing in the world. An author herself, one of her most recent books concerns what it means to thrive. There, that’s as many hints as I’m willing to disclose.
As the woman and I regarded each other closely, from across the coffee table there came a gentle chuckle.
“She likes to do this, sometimes,” said His Holiness. “Especially if I spend too much time at my desk.”
“This is HHC?” asked the Dalai Lama’s guest, her voice sonorous and merry. To give credit where it is due, she seemed to have landed on her feet just as quickly as I had.
His Holiness was nodding.
“Well,” she said, glancing over at where I sat, blue-eyed and looking so innocent that you would not even believe a clot of cream would melt in my pink mouth. “I didn’t think I’d be welcoming two celebrities to the show.”
“You like cats?” the Dalai Lama asked, gesturing in my direction.
“Oh yes!” There was genuine warmth in her accented voice. “I believe that pets can teach us in many ways. Just like you say, they can be wonderful reminders to us to get out of our heads and live in the moment.”
His Holiness was nodding with enthusiasm. “Yes, yes. They can bring us back to here and now. Not be caught up in too much thinking.”
“Which brings us back to mindfulness,” she continued in a seamless segue back to what had evidently been the subject of their interview. “We hear so much about mindfulness these days. But is it the same as meditation, or is there a difference?”
The Dalai Lama was nodding. “This is a very good question,” he said. “There is much confusion. You see, when we practice mindfulness we are present to this moment, here and now, on purpose and without judgment. We pay attention to what is coming through our sense doors. What we hear”—he pointed toward his ears—“what we taste. And so on.”
His Holiness paused, a sparkle appearing in his eyes. “There is a famous story about a novice monk who asks an enlightened master, ‘Tell me, what is the secret of happiness?’ The master tells him, ‘I eat and I walk and I sleep.’” His Holiness chuckled. “This makes the novice confused. He has to confess, ‘I also eat and walk and sleep.’ So the master has to spell it out for him. ‘Yes, and when I eat, I eat. When I walk, I walk. And when I sleep, I sleep.’ Mindfulness is when we focus on the present moment, instead of being caught up in our thoughts.”
She nodded, smiling warmly. “I came across a recent survey showing that there is a direct correlation between happiness and paying attention to what we are doing. Being in direct mode instead of narrative mode.”
“Exactly!” The Dalai Lama sat forward in his seat. “When we meditate, we choose to focus on just one object of meditation for a period of time. For example, we may focus on the breath. Or a mantra. For ten minutes, one hour.” He shrugged. “Whatever period is useful. When we concentrate like this, it supports our practice of mindfulness all the time.”
“So you might say that meditation helps us become more mindful in the same way that an exercise program helps keep us more physically fit?” confirmed the interviewer.
His Holiness was nodding. “Yes. Very good. When we are mindful we have more peace, more happiness. Greater freedom.”
The Dalai Lama went on to explain how even very busy people could create more space and contentment in their lives by mindfully drinking a cup of coffee or mindfully enjoying a shower, instead of being caught up in mental agitation. How even chores such as walking to work from the train station or ironing clothes could become opportunities to practice mindfulness.
Putting their advice to immediate action, I mindfully licked my left paw before giving both my ears a good wash. Grooming dispensed with, I walked over to the interviewer, raised my right paw, and gently prodded her thigh. This is one of the ways that we cats test unfamiliar humans to find out whether they are willing to receive that most feline of blessings—an occupied lap.
As a poised and graceful interviewer, she was hardly going to shove me away. But a subtle hand-blocking gesture or a crossing of her legs in the opposite direction was all I would have needed to take my cue.
As it happened, she did neither of those things. Instead, she lifted some notes off her lap, thereby issuing the equivalent of a gilt-edged invitation. Without further ado I climbed onto her lap and circled it a few times contemplatively before settling down.
How would I describe the lap of one of the world’s most influential digital media owners? Not too firm. Not too soft. Just right. The Goldilocks of laps, you might say. There was a warm sturdiness about that lap; it offered a nurturing safety, a safe harbor from the world beyond the lights and cameras. In many ways it seemed almost the perfect lap—except for one thing. I saw a few fine strands of dog fur, which signaled to me that felines didn’t have an exclusive place in the interviewer’s affections.
“So we tune into our five senses . . .” The interviewer resumed the conversation, but then His Holiness leaned forward, hand held up.
“In Buddhism, we have six,” he said. Then, responding to her expression of surprise, he added, “Along with visual and auditory consciousness, and so on, we also include mental consciousness. What goes on in the mind. We can be mindful of that, too.”
“That’s not the same as having thoughts, right?”
“Oh no!” The Dalai Lama’s eyes glinted mischievously. “If that were the case, we could all be very mindful with no effort!”
The two of them laughed. His Holiness adjusted his glasses. “Being mindful of the mind is when we are aware of thoughts without becoming engaged with them. We see a thought merely as a thought. An act of cognition. Something temporary that arises, abides, and passes. Like a cat jumping from one side of the sofa to the other,” he said, beaming. “This is a very useful kind of mindfulness. We cultivate the awareness behind thoughts and feelings. We become the observers of our thoughts, not their slaves. Little by little, over time, we can take control of our mind-stream and let go of mental patterns that don’t serve us well.”
As often happens when people speak to the Dalai Lama, the simplest turn of conversation led to an observation so profound, so insightful, I could feel the effect on his visitor as a visceral force. It was as though a thrill of understanding passed through her.
At that same moment, I began to purr directly into her lapel microphone, broadcasting subtle yet contented sound waves into the homes of the show’s viewers. For a short while it felt as though time was somehow suspended, and we were all absorbed into a state of understanding that transcended space and time.
Then the famous interviewer smiled and said, “Well, I can’t think of a better moment to meditate for just a few minutes. Your Holiness, would you like to lead this meditation?”
The Dalai Lama gave a short invocation to all those joining in the global session. He asked that the session be a direct cause for all living being to have happiness, to be free from suffering, and to attain complete and perfect enlightenment.
A time of quiet followed.
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As I sat, purring very gently on the visitor’s lap, it seemed to me that His Holiness’s room, filled with TV lights and crew members, was becoming rather stuffy. The heat was making me feel positively dry-mouthed. And, following my lunchtime meal, I could do with a little drink. A customary glass of water had been provided for His Holiness’s visitor on a side table, only a few steps away.
Without further ado I got up and stretched my front paws in front of me briefly. I stepped off the visitor’s lap, onto the arm of the sofa, and down onto the side table. There, I got down on my haunches and proceeded to lap the water with relish.
I’d been doing this for only a short time when I became aware of a snorting noise from behind the cameras. Within moments there came another, similar sound. I looked up briefly, unable to perceive anything but darkness behind the glare of the lights. Things went quiet for a while, but as soon as I resumed my drinking—I was thirstier than I realized—there came the sound of breathless laughter, followed by a peculiar wheezing.
Then came a full-blown attack of the giggles. One of the female members of the crew was unable to contain herself any longer. It was as though the importance of not laughing during a live, global meditation broadcast led by the Dalai Lama made it impossible to do anything but that. Once one person was giggling, it became like a contagion. It seemed soon everyone in the room was snuffling, choking, emitting all manner of noises.
His Holiness and his famous interviewer raised their heads at the exact same time. The two of them glanced toward me, brows furrowed, before dissolving into laughter. The laughter was so infectious the interviewer had tears running down her cheeks. The Dalai Lama was laughing with unfettered amusement, both hands on his tummy.
Having finished drinking, I made my way off the side table and back onto the arm of the sofa. Then I walked across the interviewer’s lap to the other side of the sofa. This provoked another round of laughter. What was so hilarious?
His Holiness gestured to her glass. “Would you like to have a drink?” he offered, prompting yet more hilarity.
“I think it’s clear to everyone,” the celebrity interviewer finally managed to say through her chuckles, “that the meditation session didn’t go quite as planned.”
“But very good medicine.” His Holiness laughed.
I was conscious that the cameras, as well as many pairs of eyes, were trained on me at that particular moment. I looked up, an imperious expression in my sapphire-blue eyes.
What was the big deal? Hadn’t anyone seen a cat drink water before?
Later that afternoon I decided to get away from Namgyal Monastery and the chaos of all the TV people with their lights and cameras and endless, snaking cables. Instead I took myself off to another one of my favorite places, first introduced to me by Serena. It had come to have a personal significance much deeper than I would ever have imagined: the Downward Dog School of Yoga.
Perched on a hillside a short distance away, the studio directly overlooked the Himalayas. It had become something of a ritual for me to take my place on a wooden stool at the back of the late-afternoon class and watch the students, silhouetted against that spectacular backdrop, as they progressed through their sequence of stretches. Afterward, feeling more settled, they would step out the sliding doors onto a broad and spacious balcony. They’d gather around their teacher, the tanned and timeless Ludo, whose silvering, close-cropped hair and faint German accent gave him the air of a guru.
In the falling twilight green tea and conversation would flow freely, and up above us the icy peaks of the Himalayas would change color from molten gold to burnished red to faint pink—the same color as the frosting of Mrs. Trinci’s cupcakes. All this was exactly the kind of gentle ritual that appeals to us cats.
It was at the Downward Dog School of Yoga that I had first met Sid, the handsome and enigmatic Indian man who had won Serena’s affections. It was here, too, that I had noticed a small, black-and-white photograph of a Lhasa apso hanging on the wall. I had guessed it was probably the particular dog after which the studio had been named. I never imagined that it had anything to do with me.
Some months ago, I had had the most vivid dream of my life. In my dream I watched a much younger version of the Dalai Lama enter his rooms at the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. There had been a sense of danger and haste. His Holiness came over to me and, picking me up, explained that he had to leave Tibet because the Red Army was bearing down on Lhasa. He would hand me over, for safekeeping, to Khandro-la, a Tibetan lady accompanying him who had a kind but fearless face. He promised to find me again—if not in that lifetime then definitely in a future one.
It had been a dream truly startling in its implications. The most shocking of which, dear reader, was that in it I was a dog.
Yes—really! A Lhasa apso, to be precise.
Because the quality of the dream was so abnormally clear and in it I had felt so normal, I never doubted the truth of it. Indeed, its veracity was soon confirmed by a subsequent event. When His Holiness was asked to officiate the reopening of the Downward Dog School of Yoga—it had been closed for repairs from a minor fire—he caught sight of me on my wooden stool at the back of the class. He glanced up at the faded photograph of the Lhasa apso.
Turning to yoga teacher Ludo, eyes twinkling, he said, “I’m so pleased she has found her way back to you.”
It seemed that I had made the journey from Tibet to India during my life as a dog, and that Ludo had played an important part in taking care of me. Why not the Dalai Lama? Where had he been when I reached Dharamsala? Had His Holiness fulfilled his promise in the way he found me again in this lifetime?
Questions, so many questions. But also a recognition that has stayed strongly with me ever since that revelation: Be careful not to heed even your most instinctive hatred of other kinds of beings, dear reader. You were almost certainly one of them in a previous lifetime.
This evening’s class followed the reassuringly similar pattern of stretching and self-discovery as most previous evenings’. All the usual people were there, including my friends Serena and Sid, on their mats directly in front of me. Ludo talked through a sequence of poses as he moved around the class, adjusting the angle of a head here, a hip there. He helped each student find the optimal alignment for opening his or her body and mind.
Ludo’s understanding of yoga had evolved over decades of practice and study. And as so often in the past, I was struck by the wisdom that he expressed in his yoga studio. It seemed so closely to parallel what I overheard on the sill of His Holiness’s office.
“These sequences are familiar to all of you, now,” he said in a gentle voice as he led the class through their standing poses. “Try to dissolve the sensations of the body into pure feeling. Dissolve all movement of the mind into that same pure feeling. Let there be stillness. Karuna, in Sanskrit. What is karuna? Nothing other than awareness imbued with compassion. Open,” he intoned, moving along a row of students. “Receptive. Expansive. Abundant. Free from ill will. A sincerity of being.”
As they moved into the Natarajasana, the Lord of the Dance pose, balancing on just one leg, Ludo continued, “It is wonderful to be able to hold these poses. But great feats of physical flexibility have little meaning if there isn’t a commensurate opening of the heart. How valid is a practice that frees our bodies from rigidity but does nothing for the mind?”
Later Ludo sat at the front to lead the class through their sitting poses. As always, the sequence of twists was accompanied by an audible crackle of joints across the room.
“How good is that!” exclaimed Ewing, an aging American man and longtime student, as his twist produced a particularly audible snap.
“What have you been up to, Ewing?” asked Merrilee in a suggestive tone as she sat next to him. She was also frequently his after-class conversational sparring partner on the balcony.
There were chuckles throughout the group.
“We get so engrained in physical patterns,” observed Ludo. “Habit
s we repeat beneath our awareness. We don’t even realize them until we bring attention to our body. Then we can let go. It’s the same for the mind. We get caught up in cycles of habit, ways of thinking that may have been useful in the past, but then we get locked into them. What was once the solution to a problem becomes a problem in itself. We need to break free.”
At this point, I noticed, Serena turned to face Sid.
“How do we do this?” continued Ludo. “Same as with the body. We bring attention to the mind. Simply by being present, here and now, we free ourselves of our conditioning. Samsara is going around and around in circles, the mind afflicted by karma and delusions. Nirvana is its oppose—letting go. Relaxing into our true state of being. Dissolving away any sense of separation between ourselves and all else.”
All the time Ludo had been speaking, Serena continued to hold Sid’s gaze with a meaningful expression, as though Ludo’s message had an especially personal significance.
I had followed the relationship between Serena and Sid since its earliest days. Among the many qualities of cats is our ability to tune in, to scrutinize, to play close attention to our human companions long after they have forgotten we are even in the room. This was how I knew that, in recent months, things between Serena and Sid hadn’t been easy.
Some years Serena’s senior, Sid had a past. Specifically, in his early twenties, he had been married to an Indian woman, Shanti, with whom he’d had a daughter, Zahra. Shanti had been an extraordinary woman: beautiful, unwaveringly loyal, vivacious, and kind. Sid had once confided that she had also possessed the same unusual clear blue eyes as me. But their marriage had been extremely difficult from the start. Shanti came from an immensely wealthy and prominent family, the Wazirs, who had arranged for her to be married to the son of an equally powerful family. It would have been a union of two of the grandest dynasties in India, and it would have preserved their status and power long into the future. Shanti rejected the arranged marriage in favor of Sid, the kind but poor maharajah of Himachal Pradesh, which was considered a shameful match by her parents—especially the socially ambitious Mrs. Wazir.