The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (The Dalai Lama's Cat 3)

“Must have played that piece a thousand times—ten thousand times—since I was a boy. Used to be able to play it in my sleep. Now look!”

“But you haven’t played for years, Franc,” Serena tried to reason. “With the sheet music—”

“That’s just it! I shouldn’t need the sheet music! I should have it down pat. I used to!”

“Bit of a refresher—” Sam began saying, but Franc had already started another piece.

It wasn’t one I recognized, though the lavish, brooding cadences suggested something romantically Russian. He didn’t get very far into it before he once again castigated himself for his “appalling” memory. His audience murmured consolingly. He ignored them.

“What about playing something you don’t need music for?” suggested Sam.

However well-intentioned the advice, it provoked a strongly negative reaction.

Franc pushed his stool back. “That’s just it! I can’t improvise!” he berated himself. “I’m a hopeless musician!”

“Franc—”

“Come on—”

“But, sir—” tried Kusali.

With calm deliberation, Franc lowered the piano lid and rose to his feet. Head bent and eyes lowered, he made his way out of the café. On his way past the counter, the two dogs leaped from their basket and glanced curiously toward the group standing by the piano, as if seeking to confirm that Franc’s short visit really had come to an end. They trotted faithfully after him.

Around the piano, Serena, Sam, Kusali, and the waitstaff stared at one another. They had just witnessed one of the most dazzling, if all-too-brief, piano performances of their lives. A performance made all the more exceptional for knowing that Franc hadn’t touched a keyboard in more than fifteen years. To hear him dismiss his highly developed ability as “hopeless” left them speechless.

“Tonight’s subject is compassion,” began Geshe Wangpo on the teaching throne at Namgyal temple. Every Tuesday night Geshe Wangpo, who—apart from being Franc’s teacher—was one of the monastery’s most revered lamas, gave a teaching in English. It was open not only to the monks but to anyone in Dharamsala who wished to attend.

From the time that Franc had begun taking a serious interest in Buddhism years earlier, he had attended his lama’s Tuesday night classes. After recruiting Sam as bookstore manager, he had found himself irresistibly drawn up the hill for what he would tell people was “free psychotherapy.” Later, when Serena became caretaker-manager, she, too, had become a regular.

The mysterious, calming atmosphere of the temple at night was part of the appeal. It was filled with drifting incense and beautiful Buddha statues, their gold faces lit by a sea of flickering butter lamps. But so, too, were Geshe-la’s teachings, which, week after week, seemed powerfully and personally directed at every single person who attended. As on my previous visits to the Namgyal temple, conveniently just across the courtyard from home, I perched myself on a shelf at the back that, over the years, I had made my own so I could survey the temple’s proceedings.

One of the most revered lamas at Namgyal, Geshe-la was one of the “old school” and had been trained in Tibet before the Chinese invasion. He had a round, muscular presence that was both powerful and utterly heart-melting. He was as respected for his intolerance toward slothfulness of body and mind as he was loved for his unceasing kindness. Geshe-la was also well known for his clairvoyant abilities.

“Love and compassion are the two core values of our tradition,” he told his audience while I looked on from my shelf. “But what do we mean by these terms? In Buddhism we define love as ‘the wish to give happiness to others.’ If we practice love, then compassion arises quite naturally, for it is ‘the wish to free others from suffering.’

“All of us feel love and compassion for friends, family, and other living beings. This is natural. Normal. When we cultivate love and compassion as part of our spiritual path, our task is to practice pure, great love and pure, great compassion. Pure means free of attachment. Not only wanting to give in order to get something back. This is not love—this is business!”

His chuckle reverberated throughout the temple.

“How much of our love and compassion is conditional? We only want this one to be happy if he or she behaves in a particular way. We are willing to help that one because we think there will come a time when he or she can return the favor. It is up to each of us to be honest with ourselves. To challenge ourselves by asking, ‘How much of my love, my compassion, is pure—and how much is attachment-based?’

“We also try to make our love and compassion great, which means not limited just to those beings we naturally care about. How many beings is that—five? Twenty? Two hundred? What about the other seven billion people on planet Earth? And the countless other nonhuman semchens, or sentient beings? Don’t they seek happiness, too? And the avoidance of suffering? Are their lives not as important to them as my life is to me? If so, on what basis can I say, ‘I only want this one and that one to be happy. The other seven billion, not so much.’ Or, ‘May all beings be free from suffering’”—here he brought his palms to his heart in mock reverence—“‘except for my ex-husband and all conservative voters.’”

Again there was a ripple of levity as an evening breeze caught the tassels dangling from the thangkas in a gust of cool air.

“Great love and great compassion come when we practice Buddhism without partiality. We don’t restrict ourselves only to those people and beings whom we like. To do this it helps to recollect that all beings, even the ones we find difficult, are just like you in that they only want to be happy. They only want to be free from pain. The way they go about seeking happiness may be delusional, it may cause great harm, but in what we want, we are all the same.”

His voice fell then, so that each one of us leaned forward to catch his next statement. Geshe-la said, “Of course, we cannot genuinely accept others and wish for their happiness if we don’t first accept ourselves.”

He paused so his words could be absorbed. Not only his words, but the meaning behind those words. Their simplicity and significance were amplified in the sacred place.

“What is the sense in wishing for the happiness of all beings but not for our own happiness? What is the point of practicing patience with complete strangers but not with ourselves? This kind of thinking makes no sense. It is also lacking in wisdom, because the self we may believe is so hard to accept has no independent reality. We cannot find it. It’s just a story we tell ourselves—a story that changes depending on our mood.

“What is the point of making up a story about ourselves that we hate? Whatever story we come up with is going to be different from the one that other people have created about us anyway—you can be sure of that.

“So relax. Let go of whatever story it is you have conceived about yourself, because it’s only a story. Don’t take it all so seriously. Don’t fool yourself into believing that what really is only a thought is the truth.”

As Geshe-la spoke, I looked over the backs of the attendees’ heads from my vantage point. Franc’s in particular. I remembered Franc’s harsh self-criticism as he sat at the piano. And my own self-blame this morning as I’d come to the end of my meditation session and realized I had spent almost no time at all focused on my breath.