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

“I just wanted to go someplace where no one else knew me. At that time, northwest India seemed like the very end of the world. But I got here, and . . .” He flashed them a rueful smile.

“Discovered that you were still yourself?” Sam queried.

“Exactly.”

“No matter how far we travel, we can never escape from ourselves,” Sam said, speaking with the authority of personal experience.

“So I threw myself into the café.” Franc shrugged. “With His Holiness just up the road and all these people in red robes, I thought it would be cool to be a Buddhist. Well, I sure got that wrong!” He chuckled. “But Geshe Wangpo pulled me up.”

“I’ve always wondered how he became your teacher,” Serena said. “He takes on so few Western students.”

“Oh, the Dalai Lama set up the whole thing,” said Franc. “Chogyal, who used to be one of his executive assistants, came in here one day asking if I’d take in little Kyi Kyi, who had been abandoned.” Franc patted the Lhasa apso beside him on the sofa. “When I went to Chogyal’s office in Namgyal to collect him, His Holiness just appeared.” Franc shook his head with a smile, “He would have seen me coming. I was full of it, in those days, absolutely full of it.”

“Whereas now?” chanced Serena mischievously.

“Still quite full of it, but at least I know I’m full of it,” he retorted, laughing.

“Anyway, His Holiness came straight to the point and said I needed a teacher. When I asked who he suggested, he named Geshe Wangpo.”

“Did you have any idea he was one of the strictest monks at Namgyal?” asked Sam.

“None at all,” replied Franc. “Obviously the Dalai Lama’s idea of a joke. But Geshe Wangpo was exactly what I needed. He quickly made me realize that Buddhism has got nothing to do with shaving your head or collecting initiations. It’s all about the mind. The more classes I went to and the more meditation I practiced, the more I began to work out, for the first time, really, that most of my unhappiness was self-created. I was torturing myself with all these unhappy thoughts—especially about my father.”

A few moments of silence followed before Sam nodded. “Sounds very similar to me.” He glanced around the table before saying, “I came here after I was laid off from a bookstore in Los Angeles. I was also torturing myself with all these negative thoughts.”

As the others murmured sentiments of sympathy and surprise, I turned to look at Sam. I remembered how nervous he had been when he’d first arrived at the Himalaya Book Café.

“I used to beat myself up thinking I was a hopeless failure,” he continued. “That I might have a head full of facts, but nobody liked me. I couldn’t relate to people.”

“I remember practically having to beg you to come and work here,” confirmed Franc with a grin.

Sam nodded.

“You know, I’d even been to see a therapist about it. She explained how it wasn’t any one thing that had actually happened that was making me feel bad. Plenty of people lose their jobs and don’t fall in a heap. It was my thoughts and interpretations that were doing all the damage. Problem was, they had become so automatic I couldn’t seem to stop them. It was only when I went up the hill to Geshe-la and started practicing mindfulness that I became aware of what was going on in my mind. That I could do something about it.”

“This is fascinating!” Serena replied. “Just this morning, the Dalai Lama was saying almost exactly the same thing, but in different words. Tell me, did the therapist suggest what you should do to get rid of the unhappiness-causing thoughts?”

“She did,” replied Sam. “And it wasn’t what you might think. Instead of more positive thoughts about myself, she recommended changing the subject altogether. She said I should concentrate more on thoughts about people I care about who are having a difficult time.”

Serena’s eyes twinkled as she sat back in her chair. “That’s just what His Holiness says, too.”

“There are a ton of parallels,” Sam observed with authority. “Many Westerners, looking at the ornate Buddhist temples, the monks in red robes, the rituals, prayers, and teachers make the understandable error of thinking of Buddhism as a belief-based religion, a kind of Christianity of the East. But in reality, it’s nothing like that at all. It’s important not to get sidetracked by what look, to us, like religious trappings. The main purpose of Buddhism is to experience the nature of mind. How our minds work is the main focus.”

“And the approach,” said Franc, “is very—”

“Rigorous,” chimed Sam. “You have someone observing a subtle aspect of consciousness over a five-thousand-hour period in a retreat. Then someone else replicates the process. They develop a language to describe their discoveries. Over thousands of years, these concepts are repeated, tested, debated. The result is a coherent understanding and some very clear direction on how best to manage your mind.”

After a pause Serena said, “No wonder His Holiness has such a clear understanding. And is always so happy.”

“I’ve still got a fair way to go to get to that stage,” Franc said, looking from Sam to Serena with a playful smile before raising his glass. “But in the meantime, there is champagne!”

A short while later I had my own opportunity to practice mindfulness, specifically, to meditate on catnip. I decided to make my way from the Himalaya Book Café back up the hill, past the Namgyal gates, and directly to the garden.

Since my first discovery of this delightful hallucinogenic I had been back several times—judge not, dear reader, we cats have no access to the beer fridge, the wine cellar, or the liquor cabinet. What harm could possibly come from a few minutes rolling around in a flower bed?

As I walked, I remembered what Mrs. Trinci had told the Dalai Lama that morning. How she had really noticed the beauty of the azaleas from her garden. How she had shed a tear over a much-loved piece of music. Mindfulness was having a ripple effect across her life, bringing a fresh vividness to all that she observed. Was it having the same effect on me, too?

For it seemed that, in the past few weeks, I had not only begun to notice things in the world around me more—I had also started to become more intuitive, more aware of connections, sensations, interrelationships to which I’d hitherto been oblivious. My encounter with Yogi Tarchin and Serena had been a part of this, a stepping-stone to the vivid recol