The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring (14 page)

He began to recite:

“It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,

Even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection,

Even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,

Even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.”

“That’s really beautiful, Lobsang,” Serena said, gazing at him with affection. “Milarepa?” she asked, citing a Buddhist sage famous for his verse.

Lobsang shook his head. “Kahlil Gibran. I love his poetry.” A faraway look came into his eyes as he contemplated the transcendent words he had just quoted.

“He’s a favorite of mine, too,” agreed Sam. “An interesting choice for a Buddhist monk.” Responding to the inquiring expressions around the table, he added, “A lot of Gibran’s work is romantic, sensual.”

“Yes,” Lobsang mused. After a pause, he said, “Sometimes I lose myself in his poetry and forget that I am a this or a that. By the end I am thinking that perhaps being a monk is not necessary.”

His words came as an unexpected admission. For the first time he seemed curiously vulnerable.

Serena reached out and squeezed his hand.

From her lap, I looked up at Lobsang and began to purr.

Yes, dear reader, that’s the other reason we cats purr. Arguably, it’s the most important reason: to make you happy. Purring is our V—our way of reminding you that you are loved and special, and that you should never forget how we feel about you, especially when you’re vulnerable.

What’s more, purring is our way of ensuring your good health. Studies show that having a feline companion reduces stress and lowers the blood pressure of humans. Cat owners are significantly less likely to have heart attacks than people who live in a catless world. If you like, you may call this the
science
of purring. While science and art don’t always seem to have much to do with each other, in this case they converge in the most life-enhancing way.

As I sat on Serena’s lap, my purr growing, I remembered the words of Kahlil Gibran. Had the great poet ever had a feline companion? I wondered. If so, what would he have written about the most important reason that cats purr? Could it have been something along the following lines?

It is to heal the body, soothe the mind, and give joy to the heart,

Because it is your beloved’s lap that you are sitting on.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

I was woken from my postlunch siesta by a familiar voice and its usual accompaniment, the percussive sound of a dozen clanging bracelets. Mrs. Trinci was visiting the café with some exhilarating news: “He’s come out of retreat!”

She and Serena were standing just a short distance away from me, beside the magazine rack.

“After ten years?” Serena’s expression was a mix of astonishment and delight.

“
Twelve
,” her mother corrected her.

“Last time I saw him was”—Serena glanced upward, trying to work it out—“before I went to Europe.”

“
Sì,
” her mother agreed.

“Who told you?” Serena asked.

“Dorothy Cartwright. I dropped in this morning. She’s up to her eyes in preparations.”

“So he’s staying with … ?”

“
Sì,
with the Cartwrights!” Mrs. Trinci’s eyes gleamed.

“And when will he … ?”

“Today!” Mrs. Trinci’s cheeks were flushed. “He’s on his way from Manali right now!”

The figure at the center of this excitement, I discovered later, was Yogi Tarchin.
Yogi
is not an official title but an informal one he had acquired over the years as his prowess as a meditation master was first affirmed and then increasingly revered. The yogi’s inclination toward a meditative life had been evident even when he was a young boy of five or six growing up in the Amdo province of Tibet. Instead of running through the fields with other boys his age, or playing with the wooden toys his father carved, he would take himself off to a small cave in the side of the mountain behind the house and sit on a rock, chanting mantras.

He had undertaken his first extensive retreat in his 20s, secluded from the world for the traditional period of three years, three months, and three days. Since then he had undertaken many more retreats. He had also endured great personal tragedy, losing his wife and two young children during his late 20s, when the bus in which they had been traveling fell down the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board.

Yogi Tarchin’s sponsor for his retreats was the Cartwright family of McLeod Ganj, whose daughter, Helen, was a friend of Serena’s. Meeting Yogi Tarchin over the tea trolley as a girl of ten, Serena had been instantly drawn to the slight and almost embarrassingly modest man. Even though his English in those days was very limited, it was his presence to which she responded, as so many people did. It was not simply the warmth in his brown eyes but a feeling of timelessness he conveyed, hard to put into words. Around him, one had the sense that the world as we know it is illusory, like clouds passing through the sky, and that behind the appearance is a reality so radiantly expansive that it is breathtaking. It was this reality to which Yogi Tarchin offered a bridge.

Because the Cartwrights and Trincis were good friends, Yogi Tarchin had been entertained by the Trincis at their home. On his return from prolonged periods in Ladakh, Bhutan, or Mongolia, he always made time to see the Trincis, even as his standing as a meditation master grew greater and greater, and long lines of people would form outside his door as monks and lay practitioners from all over the world came to seek instruction or blessings.

Stories about Yogi Tarchin were legendary. There was the time he appeared to one of his students in a dream and was so insistent that the monk visit his aged mother immediately that the very next morning the monk began the two-day trip home to Assam. On arrival he found nothing untoward—his mother was in good health and comfortable in her routine. But on the second day of his visit, a massive storm lashed the whole region, causing flash floods that in turn led to a massive landslide. His mother’s house, secure on its hillside for half a century, suddenly jolted free and began a perilous slide to catastrophe. Had the monk not been on hand to protect her, his mother would almost certainly have been killed.

Another story involved a student who had undertaken a three-month solitary retreat in a cave in Ladakh. After he rejoined his monastery, he was asked who had provided him with food. Yogi Tarchin, the monk had replied, when the yogi came to give him regular instruction. This seemed unexceptional until the other monks told him that during those three months Yogi Tarchin hadn’t missed a single meditation session with them, in their
gompa
50 miles away. Without roads or transport, the only way Yogi Tarchin could have covered the distance was through
lung-gom-pa,
a practice by which highly adept practitioners are able to effortlessly cover great distances at super-human speeds.

Then there was the American philanthropist who had collected donations for a school in Tibet that Yogi Tarchin was helping to restore. The benefactor wanted to offer the yogi the donation in person when he visited India four months hence; Yogi Tarchin told him to convert the sum into Australian dollars. Surprised by the instruction but knowing better than to question it, the benefactor followed it to the letter. Over the next three months, the value of Australian currency appreciated by 15 percent, at which point Yogi Tarchin sent a message that the money could now be changed into Indian rupees. The yogi’s facility not only for currency exchange but also for language, commerce, and any other mundane activity he chose to engage in was well known. He may not have spent much time in the ordinary world, but he understood it perfectly.

As a layperson, sometimes known as
a householder
in Tibetan Buddhism, Yogi Tarchin needed to sustain himself, and in the past he had taken on the occasional office job between retreats. But his main focus remained on meditation, most recently, four three-year retreats in succession, during which his modest needs had been met by the Cartwrights. No one had seen Yogi Tarchin for more than 12 years. If he had been capable of the most astonishing accomplishments before this period, what more might he have realized by the end of it?

Serena was by no means alone in wondering this, as I discovered on my return to Jokhang. In the executive assistants’ office, Tenzin and Lobsang were talking about Yogi Tarchin, too. They didn’t know how long he planned to stay in McLeod Ganj, but they would send a letter asking him to stay at least until the Dalai Lama returned. His Holiness would most certainly want to meet with him again.

Over at the temple the next morning, I sat sunning myself as the monks arrived for the late morning meditation session. Several times I heard Yogi Tarchin’s name mentioned, along with stories of his amazing powers. That was when I decided I was going to meet the yogi for myself. Hearsay and secondhand reports are all very well, but there’s nothing like the direct experience of sitting on a person’s lap to get a feeling for what they’re really like. Serena had secured an audience with this mystical figure. In her childhood she had been close to both Yogi Tarchin and Buddhism, but her time in Europe had filled her with doubts that had become obstacles to her practice. Not to mention that there were more personal matters on which she wished to seek his advice.

That is how I came to find myself at the Cartwrights’ house two days later. Not far from Namgyal Monastery, their home was a rambling old villa with pressed-tin ceilings and polished wooden floors layered with intricately woven Indian rugs. Dorothy Cartwright and I had met numerous times during her visits to the Himalaya Book Café, and while she may have been surprised to find me following closely in Serena’s footsteps, she would no sooner have closed the front door in my face than she would have forbidden access to His Holiness himself.

A short while later Serena was slipping off her shoes and softly knocking on a wooden door. I noticed her hands trembling slightly.

Summoned by Yogi Tarchin, she turned the brass doorknob and entered a room that seemed to be from another era. Large and spacious, it was lighted only by three narrow panel windows that glowed like bars of gold, casting an ethereal glow on the low daybed where Yogi Tarchin sat cross-legged. He was wearing a faded crimson shirt, and its muted hue and high, Nehru collar drew attention upward to a face that was as tranquil as it was ageless. When his dark brown eyes met Serena’s, his face lit up with such warmth that the air in the room seemed to dance with joy.

Kneeling on the carpet in front of Yogi Tarchin, Serena brought her hands to her heart and bowed deeply. He reached over, clasping her folded hands between his own, and touched his forehead to hers. They remained like that for the longest time, Serena’s shoulders shaking and tears sliding down her cheeks.

Finally she sat back and met his gaze of pure compassion. Words were unnecessary as the two of them sat together. Normal conversation was superfluous as they embraced again at a deeper level.

Then Yogi Tarchin spoke. “My dear Serena, you have brought someone with you.”

She turned, looking to where I sat just inside the door.

“I think she wanted to meet you.”

He nodded.

“She is very special,” Serena told him.

“I can see.”

“She is His Holiness’s Cat,” Serena explained. “But she’s spending a lot of time with us while he’s traveling.” She paused. “Do you allow … ?”

“Not as a rule,” he said. “But seeing that she is your little sister …”

Little sister?
It was said that Yogi Tarchin, like other realized masters, was clairvoyant. Or was he speaking metaphorically? Whatever the case, I required no further invitation. Launching myself toward him, I hopped up on his daybed and sniffed at his shirt. It smelled of cedar with perhaps a whiff of leather, as though it had been hanging in a cupboard for a very long time.

Just being physically close to Yogi Tarchin was an extraordinary experience. Like His Holiness, he seemed to emanate a particular energy. Along with a sense of oceanic peace he also conveyed a feeling of timelessness, as if this state of exalted wisdom had always existed just as it existed now, and always would exist.

As he asked after Serena’s mother, I confirmed that his was a lap I wished to sit on. I settled down on the blanket stretched across his legs, and he stroked me gently. The sensation of his hand against my fur sent a shiver of contentment through my whole body.

“Twelve years is such a long time,” Serena was saying. “Four retreats in a row. May I ask why you decided to continue?”

A cuckoo sounded through the late afternoon air.

“Because I could,” Yogi Tarchin said simply. Then, seeing Serena’s perplexed expression, he added, “It was the most precious opportunity. Who knows when I may encounter such circumstances again?”

She nodded. She was considering the implications of 12 years with no human contact, no TV, radio, newspapers, or the Internet; 12 years with no dining out or entertainment, no birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgivings, or other festivities. Most people would consider such sensory deprivation a form of torture. But Yogi Tarchin had willingly undertaken it, and the transcendental effect on him was palpable.