lection of my previous life in a dream. It was like having the door opened to a whole new understanding of reality.
I threw myself into the catnip with wanton abandon. I rolled and stretched and curled and shivered for the few minutes that the mysterious herb created its giddying effect.
It was only since I’d started trying to be mindful that I had discovered catnip. Only in recent weeks, since I’d become more fully awake to my senses, that I had found my way to this source of extraordinary pleasure. Was it the case that a mind less full of habitual fluffy thinking had made me more open to new possibilities? Was it purely coincidental that the catnip had appeared in the garden at this time—or did a clear and open mind allow the most delightful new opportunities to become apparent, spontaneously and without effort?
It was only when I was quite finished in the catnip and had begun contemplating the walk home to Namgyal that I turned to survey the whole garden. As I did, I noticed the shed door was open again. There was nobody inside.
Could an invitation be more irresistible?
Within moments I was inside the small wood cabin, sniffing its pungent aromas. Some were earthy and instantly recognizable, like a sack containing the mulch that I’d find scattered liberally around the bases of garden shrubs. Other odors, like those contained in evil-looking plastic bottles, made me recoil. All sorts of gardening tools were affixed to a board facing the door, each neatly occupying its own labeled place. A variety of further sacks and containers sat beneath a bench. I was investigating these with the deepest curiosity when I heard a scuffing noise behind me. A shadow suddenly fell over me. Panic-stricken, I darted into the narrow space between two sacks, just catching a glimpse of the man as he came through the door.
He turned out to be none other than His Holiness’s driver.
If I had been asked to name one person at Namgyal who I would be happy never to see again, I would have had no difficulty in naming the Dalai Lama’s driver. Fortunately, I rarely encountered him. His chauffeuring duties brought him upstairs only infrequently. When I did see him, it was usually from the safety of my sill, while I watched him polish and buff the official Namgyal Monastery car. A large man with a gruff presence, he was the one who had suggested when I caught a mouse during my earliest days at Namgyal that I should be named Mousie Tung. It was a name that had greatly amused everyone in the executive assistants’ office—with the exception of me.
“You!” he exclaimed now, recognizing the fluffy gray boots and tail protruding from between two bags of wood shavings.
I began to tremble, my whole body quaking with fear. At any moment I expected to feel his full wrath for trespassing in the shed.
“Come on, HHC. Out of there!” he commanded in a tone that was firm but, I noticed, not hostile. And he’d used my official title.
I wriggled briefly but found I was jammed. My shoulders, thrust between the sacks in an adrenaline-fueled burst, were somehow too broad to be coaxed into reverse. My legs could find no purchase on the smooth concrete floor. I was stranded and at the mercy of a man who appalled me.
“Looks like you’re stuck,” he observed, lowering himself to his haunches. He shoved one of the sacks aside, immediately easing the pressure on my body. I hastily wriggled into reverse, scrambled between his boots, and hurried outside.
Following me, he leaned down to stroke my head. “There you are,” he murmured reassuringly.
I looked up at him, startled and confused.
Where was the bully of my imagination, the one who was about to give chase? The ogre who had casually bestowed on me the one and only name I detested?
He stepped back into the shed and resumed his business. Meting out punishment for catching me inside didn’t seem to be part of his plans. In fact, he was humming the melody of a current Hindi hit in a way that suggested his thoughts had already moved on. He was, I understood now, the figure I had seen in the past from a distance but hadn’t recognized. I had never made the connection between the garden—now my garden—and the driver. As he emerged from the shed again wearing gardening gloves and carrying a small bucket and a weeding tool, I understood that it was he who often turned the soil I would use as my toilet from time to time. He raked away the leaves and other detritus and kept the lawn so neatly trimmed.
He made his way over to one of the flower beds and got down on his hands and knees. I watched as he carefully removed the weeds that were poking through the surface, digging deep into the soil to remove the whole plant, roots and all. His work was steady, careful, methodical. There was a calm flow about it that drew me closer.
Sensing this, he glanced over his shoulder and noticed me sitting just out of reach.
“It gives the old ones some pleasure, seeing a well-tended garden.” He tilted his head in the direction of the nursing home. “And you volunteer, too. Fertilizer! An important part of gardening.”
So he knew about those visits.
“I hope you like the catnip. I planted it just for you. I know you don’t have a garden next door, at Namgyal, and I thought you might like to make this place your own.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. The driver—of all people—had planted the catnip. Especially for me! I hardly knew what to think.
He continued working in silence for some time, edging closer to me on his hands and knees.
“Like meditation, gardening,” he said.
I wondered if he meant that gardening was something he found useful to help him focus on the present moment. Did the scents of loam and pine bring him back to the here and now?
What he said next, however, couldn’t have surprised me more.
“The mind is like a garden,” he told me. “You choose what to grow: weeds or flowers.”
In a single sentence, he seemed to have captured the essence of what His Holiness had said that very morning. Weeds or flowers? Mindfulness provided us with the option to choose.
The driver came even closer; I followed his movements.