The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (24 page)

“Must be a maharajah thing,” Serena observed drolly.

The housewarming party was a source of keen anticipation down at the café for one more very good reason: everyone was involved. For the first time ever, on a Saturday night, the Himalaya Book Café would be closed for dinner. Jigme and Ngawang Dragpa, the restaurant chefs, would be relocated to the new bungalow to prepare canapés. They spent considerable time with Serena beforehand, designing a menu that, like those for similar events at Buckingham Palace, consisted of tempting morsels that could be eaten in a single, delicate bite. Kusali and a handpicked team of the longest-serving waiters would be on hand to circulate the carefully designed fare.

Meanwhile, Franc was planning the entertainment. It was to be some form of subdued soiree. It also involved several visits to the bungalow, accompanied by Ewing Klipspringer, to try out the grand piano and work out logistics. The two of them refused to tell Serena exactly what they had planned, except to say that it would “reach out to everyone in the community”—a deliberately vague promise. From their chortling and guffawing as they discussed plans for the evening like two naughty schoolboys, however, Serena sensed that something was afoot.

As for the Wazirs, things with them had taken an interesting turn. According to Serena, when Sid phoned Mrs. Wazir and told her he would have no more of her meddling, his ex-mother-in-law had been stunned to silence, shocked at having being so blatantly caught in the act. For the first time ever, she hadn't even attempted to deny her machinations. Instead, in her frosty response on the other end of the phone line, he detected a grudging acceptance to his conditions: if she wanted to see her granddaughter ever again, she was going to have to abide by a very different set of rules.

Zahra phoned her grandmother the following weekend, and the old lady was diplomatic but distant. I heard this for myself, because I was sitting on Zahra's lap when she related the tale. Enjoying a weekend break from boarding school, she visited the café one Saturday afternoon. Before long, Zahra and I were on one of the sofas in the bookstore. Serena sat opposite us, and the two ladies discussed that most important of subjects: what they would wear for the housewarming party. Various options were debated and rejected. Serena suggested a shopping trip later that afternoon, for accessories.

Inevitably, talk turned to the subject of Zahra's call to her maternal grandmother.

“She didn't want to speak to me,” said Zahra. “It was like she hasn't been able to get what she wants, so I'm just . . . whatever.”

“Well, I won't pretend to like her,” said Serena. “But all relationships go through ups and downs. Don't put too much importance on a single call.”

“She was just so . . .” She shrugged.

Serena reached out and squeezed her hand. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not,” Zahra replied immediately. “I know that she was just trying to use me. I don't need people like that. I already have all the nice people I need.” She leaned over me, touching my nose to hers. Her hair once again fell like a dark curtain around our faces. “Anyway,” she mused, thinking aloud, “Mrs. Trinci is much better than Granny Wazir.”

There was a pause while Serena digested the significance of this remark. After a while she said quietly, “Well, she's certainly different.”

“No. Better.” Sitting up, Zahra shook her head.

“Can you really say that one person is ‘better' than another?”

“She makes better chocolate-chip cookies. Granny Wazir can't even boil a kettle—she has to get a servant to do it.”

Serena smiled. “Mum
is
a wonderful baker!”

“She's more fun to be with. Mrs. Trinci is always . . .” She stretched her arms up in the air and waved them around with a flourish. “La, la-la, la-la.”

“She certainly is!” Serena snorted. “But because someone can make you laugh and bake cookies doesn't seem like the most important reasons to like her over someone else.”

“She loves my little Rinpoche,” said Zahra, her tone growing serious. “Granny Wazir is allergic to her. That says it all.”

Serena didn't reply to that. For a while Zahra sat in silence, stroking me. Then she said, “It would be good if Rinpoche could come to the housewarming.”

“That's a nice thought, sweetie, but I don't think a party like that is any place for a cat.”

Oh, wasn't it? Even the most well-intentioned humans could sometimes get it so wrong!

“But we'll bring her to the house soon?” asked Zahra.

“I'm sure she'll come visiting when she knows we've settled in.”

Why would she think I'd wait that long? There were few things more enticing to a cat than a houseful of packing crates . . .

Late that afternoon, I was at my usual place on the sill. His Holiness worked at his desk. He'd received no visitors, and all during the afternoon hours while I'd enjoyed my siesta, followed by some meditation, followed by a catnip excursion next door, he had remained at his desk, studying.

I decided he'd done enough.

Hopping down from the sill, I padded over to where he sat concentrating on a text, expecting that my mere presence would distract him.

It didn't.

I stretched past his right ankle and back again around the left, massaging his feet with the extravagant luxuriance of my thick coat. He completely ignored me.

For a moment I contemplated sinking my teeth into the most tender part of his ankles, before deciding to take a different tactic. From beside his desk, I looked up at him with my big sapphire eyes—and I meowed.

“Oh, little Snow Lion!” He responded immediately, “Have I been ignoring you?” He pushed the chair back from his desk, bent down and picked me up, and carried me over to the window.

“The power of meow,” he murmured softly as the two of us stood looking out at the dusk settling across the Namgyal courtyard.

Long, slanting rays of afternoon sun burnished the courtyard a deep gold. Sandaled monks made their way quietly from the temple back to their quarters in the monastery. At the gates, the last group of that day's tourists took their final photographs of the monastery and, in the distance, the soaring Himalayas.

Then, from downtown Dharamsala, came the wail of an ambulance. It was faint at first, but it drew steadily closer and grew louder in volume as it made its way up the hill to McLeod Ganj. People began looking out of the monastery gates toward the source of the sound.

But before it reached the gates, the alarm ended as suddenly as it had begun.

The Dalai Lama hugged me to him. We were both thinking of the last time an ambulance had been so close.

“From suffering can come growth. Isn't that so, my little one?” His Holiness seemed to be reminding me of the night we'd both looked out at the temple lights, and in particular, the meaning of the symbol of the lotus. “Sometimes it can take a shock, an outside event, to help us find our way to a more useful life.”

There was a pause while I considered this. Then the Dalai Lama observed, “I know you have already discovered this.”

The recognition that I had grown in some small but important way made me purr. And as I contemplated the months that had passed since Mrs. Trinci's heart attack and then her first meditation lesson, I realized how much I had come to learn about the gentle and profoundly life-changing practice of simply being here, now.

I had discovered, to begin with, that I wasn't all alone in suffering from fleas. I had learned that even humans experience great mental agitation when they begin trying to meditate. Poor Mrs. Trinci had even believed herself incapable of calming her mind until the Dalai Lama had convinced her otherwise.

Geshe-la's teachings on self-compassion, so life-changing for Franc, had also had a special relevance for me and my own attempts to meditate. Being cruelly judgmental would achieve nothing, I had discovered. On the other hand, even a little progress could mark a major turning point. I remembered the morning I had faced seafood medley for the fifth breakfast in a row, the disappointing lapse at the Himalaya Book Café that had deprived me of my much-loved sole meunière at lunch, and how I had suddenly realized that my deep disgruntlement was less a result of what had happened to me than of my state of mind. I had come to see for myself that while I couldn't change the world, I could change the way I experienced it. Even my modest, seemingly ineffectual attempts at mindfulness up till then had begun to protect me from life's inevitable ups and downs. What a wonderful realization that had been. Almost—could I really be thinking this?—wonderful enough to justify the tedium of seafood medley for five breakfasts in a row!

Mindfulness made the world a more exquisite place. For Mrs. Trinci, it had made music lovelier and flowers more beautiful. For me, catnip became no doubt more intoxicatingly “catnippier” than it might have otherwise been. I had learned that when I really paid close attention, when my mind was open and my senses acute, I was able to find intense joy in the simplest of things.

I had also come to recognize that I didn't have only five senses. During the famous online media queen's visit, His Holiness had explained how, just as we pay attention to what we see, hear, and smell, we can also pay attention to our thoughts—not by engaging with them but by merely observing them. The radical idea that I could shift from getting involved with every thought I had to simply but objectively watching them was a revelation. As Ludo had said at the yoga studio, creating space, cultivating awareness, is vital if we are to let go of old habits. And as my newfound friend the driver had observed in the garden, it is only when we are aware of what is happening in our minds that we are able to plant flowers and root out the weeds.

It had been intriguing to hear from the visiting litter man how his company benefited from mindfulness with more innovation, productivity, job satisfaction, and team building, even if those things weren't directly relevant to a cat on a sill.

Of much more personal interest to me was the truth pointed out by Yogi Tarchin that abiding in the here and now protects us from anxiety about the future as well as from the traumas of the past. The physical results of which, as Oliver and Tenzin's recent census clearly showed, were better health and longer life.

But weaving through all my encounters of the past weeks was one theme that His Holiness returned to often. It paralleled what Ani Drolma had told Serena only recently: mindfulness is the key to discovering the primordial nature of mind itself. And what we find, at first only in glimpses, is that our minds are boundless and radiant, as much in the nature of feeling as in the ability to perceive. When we tap into this, we encounter feelings of expansive tranquility and abiding bliss.

“Yes, my little Snow Lion,” the Dalai Lama continued as if he was aware of exactly what I was thinking, “the greatest
terma
we can find is not in a cave in the mountains, it is within ourselves. We must each discover the treasure that we already possess, which is the nature of mind itself. Our only job is to remove the obscurations, to shake off the fleas. That way, we find that our own deepest nature is one of pure, great love and pure, great compassion.”

In His Holiness's arms, I had never felt closer to that wonderful truth.

Along with cerebral pursuits, I was as curious as ever about more practical matters. In particular, progress at 21 Tara Crescent, which continued to be the subject of daily updates at the Himalaya Book Café.

Upon hearing that floors, carpets, and curtains had been installed in Sid and Serena's new home, midway through an otherwise sleepy afternoon I decided that the time had come for me to make another site visit. After a nature stop in the garden, I continued up the road until reaching the Patel Construction sign that marked the entrance to the drive. I also discovered impressive gateposts had been built—brass numerals reading “21” were on the left-hand gate, and a letterbox was on the right. The gates, currently open, were large, made from wrought iron, and painted black. I was relieved to find that the gaps between the bars were just wide enough for the fluffy body of a long-haired feline.