by David Michie
There was a collective gasp of surprise, followed by a palpable wave of sympathy as Franc brushed a tear away from his cheek.
“There is one man who made this evening possible and I didn’t invite him because I didn’t think this was the kind of thing he would attend. But it turns out he came anyway.”
People turned to see Geshe-la gazing at Franc with a look of supreme benevolence.
“It is Geshe Wangpo who taught me the importance of self-acceptance. That we can allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Which is why I want to thank you, Geshe-la, from the bottom of my heart.” Emotion tugged at Franc’s mouth as he brought his palms together at his heart. “You made it possible for me to feel the joy of playing music again.”
The audience applauded warmly, but this time the energy was of a different quality. It was not the exuberant excitement of before, but rather a wave of profound gratitude, a deeply felt communal embrace.
Stepping from among the tables, Geshe-la approached Franc as he stood at the front of the store. He took both Franc’s hands in his own and bowed toward him so that their foreheads touched. It was a very special and very public blessing, one that conveyed a special energy throughout the whole room. It was as though all of us were caught up in the poignancy of what was happening—as though we, too, were receiving the blessings of Geshe-la. He was telling us all to accept ourselves, to let go of the burden of destructive self-criticism and all the limitations it brings. Even as it was happening, we knew this was a moment we would long remember.
The walk home to Namgyal from the Himalaya Book Café was short but it was also uphill, so sometimes I’d pause for a rest. After the soiree, I was doing just this when there came the sound of sandals behind me; I turned to see Geshe Wangpo.
“HHC!” he greeted, footsteps slowing. “You also came to the concert?”
As he bent to stroke me, I purred.
“Lift home?” he inquired.
I appreciated the offer. There had been rain earlier that evening, and I didn’t want to get muddy and damp if I could avoid it.
Taking me into his arms, Geshe Wangpo continued, “It’s wonderful what becomes possible when we start to accept ourselves,” he told me. “Others find it easier to accept us, too, when we don’t keep engaging in negative thoughts about ourselves.”
As we made our way through the monastery gates, he murmured, “And we can achieve so much more when we are positive. Confident.”
I wondered if he was talking about my mental fleas. Not the fact that they occurred but rather the harsh way I had judged myself when they appeared. How I told myself my meditation practice was pointless, and that I must just as well give up.
“Check up on what is happening in your mind,” continued Geshe Wangpo. “Let go of negative thinking. But you know this already, don’t you, HHC?”
As we reached the edge of the courtyard nearest my home, he put me back down on the ground with special care.
Yes, I did know. Compassion begins with self-acceptance. Self-acceptance first requires letting go of negative thoughts about yourself. And it requires being aware of the negative thoughts to begin with. I hadn’t fully understood the importance of that until this evening.
I rubbed up against Geshe-la’s bare ankles by way of thanks. As he turned to walk toward his room I heard him humming something under his breath—a curiously Tibetan rendition of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances.
It was while going around the building to the secret entrance I used to get inside that I caught a whiff of it again—that special scent! The new, arresting one I’d first detected on the sill upstairs. It was stronger down here, much stronger. And even more compelling. It seemed to be coming from the opposite direction of the Himalaya Book Café, up the same road, probably, but to the left instead of right out of the monastery gates. I sometimes visited a garden just a short distance away in that direction to perform my toilette, but I hadn’t been there for a while. Could it be a new plant? I wondered. No matter how far away the bewitching fragrance originated, I decided, I had to find out what it was.
No sooner had I made this decision, however, than a big, fat raindrop exploded on my nose. Followed a few moments later by another on the crown of my head. A gust of wind tore through the trees above me; swaying branches scattered another shower of droplets.
Ears pressed back, I scampered to a ground-floor window left permanently ajar and quickly hopped inside.
The mystery of the scent would have to wait.
But not for long, I promised myself.
CHAPTER FOUR
Isn’t it curious how, very occasionally, we have a strong and inexplicable feeling about a complete stranger? Most of the time, someone we don’t know is just someone we don’t know. Perhaps we form an impression of them on account of how they dress, speak, or move. We usually have no expectation, no feeling—good or bad—when we first encounter a new person.
But the moment one particular woman appeared at the Himalaya Book Café, I knew she was trouble. Petite, elegantly attired in black, her dark hair immaculately coiffed, she carried herself with a regal bearing. She paused for a few moments inside the front door and surveyed the establishment though hooded eyes as though she’d come to judge it and had immediately found it wanting.
From my perch on the top shelf of the magazine rack, I felt provoked. Who was this dreadful woman? I wondered. My drowsy siesta came to an abrupt halt. How dare she stand there with that disdainful smirk on her face?
I followed her movements intently as one of the waiters greeted her politely and showed her to a table. Fatefully, it was the banquette at the very back of the café—the one nearest me. She perched on the seat in a way that minimized her physical contact with it, as though she’d been asked to sit on a compost heap. She ordered a bottle of sparkling mineral water.
As she waited, she glanced around the place as though everything about it was woefully inadequate. From her features, she appeared to be in her sixties, accustomed to genteel refinements and to having her own way. The disapproval on her face suggested that the gentle, baroque music was too classical. The thangkas on the walls too Buddhist. The white linen tablecloths insufficiently starched.
The waiter arrived back and poured effervescent water into a gleaming glass with a practiced flourish. But this somehow repulsed the woman even more. Head jerking back, she held her breath until she seemed about to explode.
Then she sneezed.
She fumbled inside her handbag, seized a handkerchief, and wiped her nose. She glared at the waiter, who stood wearing a concerned expression, before shooing him away as though he had no right to be there. Her eyes filled with tears. She took a few deep, labored breaths. She sneezed again.
As she continued to dab at her face, she glanced around as though grievously slighted by the management of the Himalaya Book Café. She looked from one side to the other, until, with a certain inevitability, her gaze fell on me. For the first time her eyes met mine—in their dark, brown depths was a look of pure hatred.
By now, the omniscient Kusali was already gliding smoothly across the restaurant to her table.
“Bless you, madam.” He bowed sympathetically as she sneezed again. “May I—”
“Get that . . . thing out of here!” she said as she pointed at me furiously. “I’m allergic!”
“Allow me to show you to another table, ma’am,” Kusali said as he pointed to a table near a window on the other side of the restaurant.
“Don’t want another table,” she wheezed. “I want that”—she flicked her hand dismissively—“away from me!”
“Moving to another table would have the same effect,” reasoned Kusali.
“This whole place is probably full of cat hair,” she said as her eyes streamed and she sneezed again. “Just get it out of here!” she demanded imperiously.
Over the years, I’d seen Kusali indulge some outlandish requests made by café patrons. But on this matter he was steadfast.
“That’s
not possible, ma’am,” he replied.
“Why not?!” The woman’s voice rose sharply.
“The magazine rack is her place. She likes it there.”
“Are you mad?” The woman trumpeted into her handkerchief. “How can a cat be more important—”
“She’s no ordinary cat. She’s—”
“Get me the person in charge,” she ordered, her shrill voice carrying across the restaurant.
Kusali drew himself up to his full, imposing height. “I am the person in charge.”
“Then the owner.”
The subtlest motion of Kusali’s head was all that was required for two waiters to manifest almost instantaneously at the table.
“Madam, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said firmly.
“I’m staying right here till you bring me the owner.”
As more waiters approached and Kusali’s expression turned to one of stern censure, the furious woman realized she was out of options.
“This place is disgusting!” Rising from her chair, she unleashed a stream of bitter invective about the restaurant, the staff, and the management. She saved her harshest words for cats, who she described as “vermin.”
Never had the Himalaya Book Café witnessed a tirade as poisonous. Nor a departure as threatening.
Turning at the front door to wag her index finger directly in Kusali’s face, she screamed, “You haven’t heard the last of this!”
A short while later I, too, left the Himalaya Book Café. Despite a very gracious apology from Kusali soon after the woman’s departure—which he delivered along with a consoling soupçon of cheddar—the truth is that I felt rattled. Unsettled. Disturbed in a way and at some deep level I was unable to account for.
It wasn’t only that the woman was allergic and a cat-hater. I was also surprised at the strength of my own feelings. From the moment she’d walked through the door, an instant and powerful animosity I hadn’t even known I possessed had welled up within me.
At an ordinary level, none of it made sense. But because of all the conversations I’d overheard through the years, I was aware of a reality that ran beneath the ordinary. Dynamics that might explain why things appeared to me the way they did.
In an entirely unexpected and unwelcome way, that afternoon it felt as though something in my distant past was catching up with me.
My paws led me back to Namgyal through force of habit. I was about to cross the courtyard when I caught sight of someone sitting alone on a bench under the cedar tree near the monastery gate. I could hardly believe my eyes. Catching a glimpse of Yogi Tarchin was a rare event, given that most of the time he lived in strict seclusion. Discovering him in the Namgyal courtyard was simply extraordinary. And to find him here, today of all days, seemed the most incredible timing.
Although Yogi Tarchin wasn’t a monk, he was revered by all for his accomplishments as a meditator. Stories about him were legendary. It was said that he had appeared in the dreams of his students, giving them instructions that later saved their lives. There were few things in the past, in the future, or in the minds of others that Yogi Tarchin seemed unable to see.
Whatever the inspiring stories about him, however, Yogi Tarchin was more inspiring still in person. Like the Dalai Lama, his presence was something you felt. You weren’t introduced to him so much as touched by his being. A field of profound serenity extended well beyond his physical form to embrace all those around him.
I had met Yogi Tarchin through Serena—the Trincis were long-standing friends and had helped sponsor him through numerous retreats. And even though I had been only a hanger-on during her visit to him, our encounter that time had seemed to be no casual thing. The night after I’d spent time with him, I’d had that astonishing dream—the one in which my past life as the Dalai Lama’s dog had been revealed.
This afternoon he was wearing a gold-colored shirt the same hue as the liquid amber of the afternoon sun and brown trousers. His sandaled feel crossed neatly at the ankles. His face was ageless and radiant, and he had a gray moustache and goatee—the classic features of an oriental sage. His lightness of spirit, hinted at in the warmth of his brown eyes, was never far from the surface.
I felt delight the moment I saw him—not, of course, that I showed it. We cats are far too soigné and sophisticated for that. Instead, I walked over to a gatepost and sniffed at it tentatively before ambling over to his bench and, still not directly acknowledging him, rubbed myself against its wooden legs.
Knowing better than to try to coax me, Yogi Tarchin simply sat with his hand dangling down from the bench seat. After a decent period elapsed I made my way over to where he was sitting, as though I happened to be heading in that direction anyway. I rubbed up against his hand. He lifted me gently onto his lap, where I quickly settled. His fingernails massaged my forehead just how I liked it, and I purred loudly.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” murmured Yogi Tarchin. “Much better to be here and now, on a perfect afternoon in the courtyard, than lost in cognition.”
What he said was so true. Simply being on his lap, I felt quite naturally brought into the present. Away from remembering the unpleasant episode at the café. Looking through the deep green branches of the cedar, I noticed the sky—clear and azure—and the ever-present Himalayas in the distance, their ice-capped peaks gleaming in the sunlight.
The here and now. What contentment it held! Why spoil it by thinking?
In recent weeks I had become a more regular meditator. Even though I continued to be troubled by mental fleas, sometimes they seemed less aggressive in their activity. While remaining aware of them, I was able to keep my attention on my breath. On such fleeting occasions, they seemed to disappear. Sitting on Yogi Tarchin’s lap, I was barely troubled by them at all.
I’m not sure how long I had been sitting there, absorbed in the present, when I was jolted into thought by none other than Serena. She was walking down toward the Himalaya Book Café on the other side of the street, arms crossed and with an intense expression on her face. In recent months I had often seen her walking in just the same way, wearing the same face. I wondered where she’d been.
She glanced over into the courtyard. Seeing the two of us sitting together, her expression instantly changed. As did her direction. She crossed the street, came through the gates, and approached where we sat, palms folded at her heart.
“Rinpoche!” she greeted Yogi Tarchin with a smile, bowing slightly. Then, sitting on the bench next to us, she said, “Other Rinpoche!” to me.
“We’ve both been waiting for you,” said Yogi Tarchin with a chuckle. Like many of the things said by enlightened masters, it was sometimes hard to tell whether he was being playful or serious. Having never seen him in the courtyard before, let alone sitting on this bench, it seemed more than simple coincidence. I felt sure he was here for a reason.
“You are busy,” he said, nodding in the direction from which she’d come.
Serena’s face clouded. She glanced away from him for a few moments before seeming to decide that there was no point pretending.
“Oh, Rinpoche!” she said, her eyes revealing her inner turbulence. “I know I often treat you like a therapist, but I don’t know what to do!”
Yogi Tarchin reached out and squeezed her arm reassuringly. “This is why I’m here,” he said before reaching down to stroke me. I felt included in what he’d just said. In the warmth of that late afternoon, I wondered what was about to unfold. Yogi Tarchin’s advice was always insightful.
“Is it your maharajah friend?” His voice was soft.
She nodded.
“In so many ways everything between us is . . . just perfect,” she managed after a while. “He and Zahra, his gorgeous daughter . . . the three of us had seemed to become this perfect little family.”
Taking a handkerchief out of her purse, she wiped her eyes and face.
“Sid asked me to move in with him. Not to where he’s living right now; he says he doesn’t want us
living above the shop. He bought a bungalow just along this street.” She gestured in the direction from which she’d been walking.
My ears pricked up at this. How far away? I wondered.
“The idea was that it would take a couple of months for some renovations, then we’d move in. When the couple of months stretched out to six, I was disappointed. But I accepted that work on the house just couldn’t be finished before then.
“A few other things have been going wrong in the meantime—cancellations, postponements of what had been planned as really special moments for the three of us. I’ve just been up at the house and now I’ve been told it could still be another six months until the renovations are complete! Something to do with appliances having to be imported. There’s always some excuse. But the workers there are always evasive. It doesn’t feel right. My gut instinct is that there’s more to this. Someone behind the whole thing. I’m just terrified it’s going to come between Sid and me.”
Yogi Tarchin nodded calmly. “My dear, your intuition may very well be right.” He met her eyes directly. “But perhaps you have to allow things to unfold of their own accord. You can’t force a rosebud to open by plucking at its petals. Sometimes, you must wait for nature to take its course, for the other person to see reality for himself.”
There was a long pause while she absorbed what he’d told her. She knew that Yogi Tarchin’s advice was impeccable, that everything he’d ever told her had been true.
After a while she shook her head. “Why now?” she asked. “Why at this time? Is it karma?”
“Of course. All is cause and effect. Action and reaction.”
“From a past life?”
“Most things in this life arise from causes created in previous ones. And the causes we create in this lifetime will bear fruit in future lives.”