by David Michie
“It just seems a bit . . . futile,” she said, sounding despairing for a moment.
“How do you mean?”
“We all go around creating causes for future effects without even being aware of it. Then, by the time the effects happen, we have no idea why because we’re not even the same beings we were when we caused them.”
Serena was giving voice to one of the very questions that had been vexing me ever since my extraordinary dream. Looking up, I watched as Yogi Tarchin threw his head back. His eyes crinkled shut and he laughed. He seemed to find this hilarious.
“What?” Serena asked him after a while. A smile formed at the corners of her mouth, but lines also appeared on her forehead.
“The way you put it like that—too funny!” he said, gasping.
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
He nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yes, yes. Different person. But same subtle continuum. Same energy. Energy is not created or destroyed. Because consciousness is energy, it, too, is never destroyed. It changes form, yes, but it’s always there and always has been there.
“Our big problem, as humans, is mistaking this very temporary thing we call ‘me,’ this acquired personality, with our subtle consciousness, which is primordial. We do things to advance the short-term interests of this temporary ‘me,’ even things that involve harming others, thinking that because there is no immediate effect on the temporary ‘me,’ that there will be no effect at all.
“But when you step back and view time from a wider perspective, you can see how one human lifetime is like this,” he said as he snapped his fingers. “Just because there is no instant effect doesn’t mean there is no effect at all. All actions have results. How can a negative action give rise to anything but a negative result? Or a positive action give rise to anything but a positive result?
“What moves from one lifetime to another with the flow of subtle consciousness isn’t the acquired personality. It isn’t intelligence, a memory, religious views, or race. It isn’t even species.”
I paid special attention to this last point and listened closely to Yogi Tarchin.
“When I die,” he continued, “you will never see me again. That is the end of the Yogi Tarchin experience. Does that mean my life has been futile?”
He had returned to her point directly and was now looking into her eyes.
“No.” He shook his head. “The opposite. In this lifetime, we create the causes for whatever we wish our consciousness to experience in the future. Human life, in particular, offers an unrivaled opportunity to create limitless causes not only for future positive experiences but, more important, the chance to break free completely from this cycle of birth, aging, and death.”
Serena was following him intently. “Very few people understand this is what they’re caught up in,” she said.
He nodded. “And we should never take these teachings for granted. Just hearing the Dharma is rare and requires extraordinary karma. To have an inclination toward it, and the wish to practice sincerely, is even more amazing! Fortunately, both you and your little sister are devoted to the dharma.”
As Serena reached out to stroke me, I acknowledged her by lifting my head. It wasn’t the first time that Yogi Tarchin had called me this. He’d used exactly the same words the first time I’d accompanied Serena to see him.
“You’re saying I was a cat in a previous lifetime?” she smiled.
Yogi Tarchin laughed. “Serena, my dear, you’ve been everything. We all have. Every kind of sentient being not just on planet Earth, but in the whole universe.”
“Well,” she said after a pause. “That puts my concerns about Sid into perspective.”
I felt Yogi Tarchin shift in his seat. “I can understand why you’re anxious,” he said. “But allow things to play out naturally.”
“Thank you, Rinpoche.” Serena’s voice was filled with relief. “In the meantime, I just have to practice patience?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “And mindfulness. Being here and now. Enjoying a warm afternoon under a tree with your meditation friend and little sister. Try to let go of inner chatter and simply be. Be mindful of all six senses.”
It was a midafternoon some days later when a stocky Indian man in a dark suit appeared in the entrance of the Himalaya Book Café. He wore heavy horn-rims and carried a clipboard. When Serena went over to greet him, he announced he was from the Hygiene Inspection Unit of the local council. Unannounced inspections from the HIU were rare but not unheard-of. Given their well-drilled procedures for food preparation, they were of no concern to Serena.
“Come this way,” she said, gesturing. “I’ll show you through the kitchens and storage areas.”
“Actually, madam, I’m here to inspect the dining room.”
Serena paused, eyes wide with surprise. She glanced across the pristine white tablecloths of the café area to the gleaming windows on the other side. The floors had just that morning, as on all mornings, been thoroughly vacuumed and mopped. The atmosphere was as much that of a temple as a restaurant. The ambience of rarefied civility, of East meets West, was one of the main reasons why the café had been so popular, especially with tourists, since the day it opened.
“Surely there’s no problem here?” she asked in astonishment as Kusali materialized beside the two of them.
“We received a complaint,” the inspector told them.
Serena and Kusali exchanged glances. Kusali, of course, had told both Serena and Franc about the “altercation” a few days earlier. His unprecedented action in asking the customer to leave. Her dark-eyed threat that the café hadn’t heard the last from her.
“Hygiene problems. Contamination risk. Vermin infestation. Danger to people suffering from asthma. And”—the inspector cleared his throat—“a . . . cat in the restaurant?”
As he surveyed the tables, the inspector failed to see me. But then he stepped farther into the restaurant and looked over to the left, glancing at the steps leading up to the bookstore. My magazine rack was of course just beside these. Inevitably, his gaze rose and settled on the top shelf. Paws tucked neatly beneath me, I sat watching events unfold with all the inscrutability of a sphinx.
A gleam appeared in his eye. The inspector wheeled around to face Serena and Kusali. “Bylaw 1635b of the Hospitality and Liquor Act states that it is an offense for livestock and domesticated animals to be housed in a restaurant.”
“I wouldn’t say she is housed here,” Serena said as color rose in her cheeks. “She is a visitor.”
“Nevertheless, I came to inspect the premises. I found a cat present where it was reported to have been before,” the inspector explained with pedantic detail. “Bylaw 1635b—”
“It all seems ridiculously technical!” Serena protested.
It seemed the worst thing she could have said.
“Madam.” The inspector lowered his face and regarded her over the tops of his horn-rims with the utmost severity. “The technical reality,” he pronounced the words significantly, “is all-important.”
“Who complained?” Serena demanded.
“I’m not permitted to disclose that information.”
“Well, you may want to check up on her credibility. Just look at this dining room.” She gestured with the same Italian brio as her mother would have. “It’s one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful in the whole of Dharamsala. As for hygiene—”
“You may well be correct on the first score,” the inspector conceded. “However, as to the matter of the cat . . .”
At this point Kusali, who had been following everything in silence, asked with almost exaggerated politeness, “May I ask, sir, if the Council has floor plans of these premises?”
“Of course.” The inspector gestured with his clipboard. “I have them here.”
“You may want to check them before this conversation goes further.”
The inspector glanced at him sharply.
“I believe, sir, you could
save the Council great embarrassment if you do.”
The inspector placed his clipboard down, removed a folded document from under its shiny clip, and was soon spreading it out on top of a table.
“You’ll see that according to the Council’s own plans the restaurant ends here.” Kusali ran a finger down a line. “While the bookstore begins here.” He paused while the inspector looked over the architectural drawings. “The technical reality is that those shelves are not in the restaurant. They are in the bookshop.”
The inspector stared at the plans for a very long time before looking back toward me.
“You have a point,” he admitted, crestfallen.
Serena’s eyes blazed triumphantly at Kusali’s victory. “What’s more, you are not looking at a domesticated animal,” she said.
“No?”
At that very moment—oh how rare it is, dear reader, for events to fall into place so powerfully or poignantly—a group of five Japanese tourists came into the café and headed directly toward the magazine rack. Like many visitors who came to McLeod Ganj for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama, only to be disappointed, they had opted for the next best thing, which was an audience with HHC. So strong was their devotion that, as soon as they approached the magazine stand, they began dumping their bags, cameras, and umbrellas, and performing prostrations to me.
The HIU inspector, becoming less and less sure of himself by the second, watched this all with astonishment. “Who is . . . this?” he asked, finally, gesturing toward me.
“She is the Snow Lion of Dharamsala,” one of the Japanese tourists offered.
“Rinpoche,” chimed several of the others.
“She is the reincarnation of a very holy being,” said another.
It was the first time I’d heard that particular explanation!
Then Serena said, “She lives with His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.”
Watching the inspector take all this in, Kusali suggested smoothly, “You might say that she is a Sacred Being.”
The inspector took a few steps toward me. “A Sacred Being . . . ,” he repeated.
“Who abides in the bookshop,” Kusali affirmed.
“Indeed.”
This was how, dear reader, I came to find myself with another name. One soon to be noted in Council records, to be preserved in some dusty archival room till the end of time.
But at that particular moment, my attention was distracted by something else entirely. While the inspector had been regarding me, Serena had pulled back the plans spread across the table to look at the clipboard underneath them. What she saw drained all the color from her cheeks.
She was still in a state of shock after the inspector left the premises. It took her only moments to draw Kusali to one side and tell them what she had seen: on the front page of the register, the complainant was named as Mrs. Prapti Wazir.
CHAPTER FIVE
The day started badly when I awoke to a cold bed: the Dalai Lama was away on a teaching trip to Korea, and without his compassionate presence my world just didn’t feel right. Getting up much later than usual, I made my way to the kitchen. Seafood medley again! Fifth day in a row! His Holiness would never dream of serving me the same thing for breakfast twice, let alone five times—I was a cat who liked variety. Whoever was on HHC meal service that week just wasn’t getting it. The Dalai Lama was returning later today, and not a moment too soon!
After a couple of mouthfuls of the briny sludge, I made do with some dry food. That would tide me over till lunchtime down at the café, where I would be served a few gourmet morsels of that day’s spécialité du jour.
Just before lunch service was due to begin at the café, however, Kusali was called away on a family emergency. Without the head waiter, the remaining staff came under pressure to fill his role. A casual visitor may not have noticed any difference, but as a longtime observer I saw it in the way that empty water glasses remained unfilled for minutes longer than usual. The way that patrons had to wait fractionally longer for their orders to be taken. Of much more personal importance, the way that no gourmet morsel was produced for me from the first batch of mains. And that day’s spécialité was sole meunière—a particular favorite.
With Kusali gone and Franc buried in his office, I seemed to have been forgotten. Every time the kitchen doors swung open, there would come another mouthwatering gust from the stove tops. Surely someone would soon notice? I kept telling myself. It’s not as though Kusali was the only one who ever served me lunch. One of the other waiters would often be dispatched. What’s more, the kitchen staff was well aware of the routine.
I had no choice but to keep waiting, my displeasure mounting. With every appearance of a waiter from behind the kitchen doors but no sign of my saucer, my disgruntlement grew.
What a dreadful day it was turning out to be! From the moment I got up, it seemed, everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong. I should have stayed in bed. Instead of eating even those few mouthfuls of the dire seafood medley, I should have sunk my teeth into the ankles of the nearest monk in the kitchen. That would have shown them! As for the waitstaff at the Himalaya Book Café, couldn’t they cope with one man down? The moment Kusali left, it seemed, they began running around like headless chickens.
More time went by, and things moved into the late stages of the lunch service. A lot of the diners were already on to dessert. The aroma of sole meunière was gradually replaced by bursts of citrus and lime. The grind of roasted Zimbabwean coffee beans wafted over from the espresso machine. I was exasperated. Starving. My stomach growled loudly.
The last straw was when a waiter came to take the orders of a family of Germans sitting in the banquette nearest my shelf. The teenage daughter asked for the sole meunière. The waiter replied, “I’m very sorry, miss. The sole was very popular today and we have run out.”
Run out? Of sole meunière? What sort of establishment was this?!
Stepping down from the magazine rack, I stalked out of the café in high dudgeon, my mood unimproved by the fact that no one paid me a blind bit of notice. There was no frisson of excitement at catching a glimpse of His Holiness’s Cat. No attempts to coax the Sacred Being to a table with an unfinished portion of fish—or even a few licks of cream. Despairing that all that remained between now and dinner was a bowl of dried cat food, I wondered how things could possibly have sunk so low.
I passed through the gates of Namgyal and saw the bench on which I had so recently sat with Yogi Tarchin and Serena. I remembered what the meditation master had said about becoming aware of one’s own thoughts. How His Holiness had said much the same thing to the TV interviewer. I recollected the Buddhist view that, when we focus the spotlight of attention on our thoughts, instead of dwelling on them and becoming their victims, we have the choice to let go.
And that was when I realized something.
In previous weeks, I had been through far worse than today’s petty disappointments. Only ten days ago I had been completely drenched in a downpour and couldn’t get back inside the house for hours because someone had shut my window. At the time I had been frustrated but stoic. Because I had practiced meditating, my thoughts had been calm and at peace. I knew a door or window would eventually open. Just as I knew, right now, that there were greater misfortunes in the world than having to eat seafood medley for breakfast and missing out on a lunchtime treat.
Realizing the effect that the meditation practice had on my mind came as a wonderful surprise. I felt almost grateful to have missed out on the sole meunière! I had proven, for myself, the difference that meditation made—and I knew this revelation would make it that much easier to return to regular practice again. Feeling almost celebratory, I scampered along the upstairs corridor. I heard lively chatter coming from the executive assistants’ office and peeked in. I remembered something about Serena coming in to discuss a VIP lunch the following week: in her mother’s absence, she had offered her services as VIP chef. Along with Serena and Tenzin sat the D
alai Lama’s new translator, Oliver.
Oliver had been working at Namgyal for less than a month, but he and Tenzin had already become fast friends after the latter discovered that Oliver came from Berkshire, in England. Having attended Oxford University in the distant past, Tenzin was a staunch Anglophile. He soon learned that he and Oliver shared a deep appreciation for the BBC, Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, and tea correctly served—which invariably it wasn’t in McLeod Ganj. Just then, all three of them were gathered around the two executive assistants’ desks, a tea tray in front of them.
“I’m not at all surprised at her doctor,” Oliver was saying. “Of all the research done, there have been more studies on high blood pressure and stress than on anything else.”
“I had no idea,” said Serena.
“Dozens of them, in top medical schools. The results are consistent. Meditation has a major impact on every biological marker of stress. It brings down high blood pressure. Slows hardening of the arteries. Boosts endorphins and the immune system. Increases the production of melatonin, a powerful antioxidant that destroys free radicals.”
“Yes,” Serena chimed. “Her doctor mentioned free radicals.”
“There’s a lot of stuff coming out now about longevity, too, and how it increases with meditation.”
“It must be wonderful,” Tenzin observed somewhat wistfully, “to be a really good meditator.”
I was standing out of view by the doorway. With his back to me, sitting in Chogyal’s old chair, Oliver was nodding. “As it happens, most of the studies done are on novices.”
“Really?” Serena was incredulous.
“I suppose there’d be little point in doing studies only using very experienced meditators,” observed Tenzin. “Most of us will never be in that category.”
“Exactly,” agreed Oliver. “There are massive changes even when people have fairly poor concentration. It doesn’t take us long to discover the truth in Shantideva’s verse about emotional protection.”
“Which one is that?” asked Serena.