The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat 2)

I was relieved when the twist ended but immediately found myself being observed once again, when everyone turned toward me in the opposite direction.

At the end of the class, as they lay on their mats in Shavasana, the pose of the corpse, Ludo told the students, “In some ways this is the most challenging pose of all. Calm body and calm mind. Try not to engage with every thought. Simply acknowledge the thought, accept it, and let it go. We can discover far more in the space between thoughts than when we become absorbed in conceptual elaboration. In the stillness we discover that there are other ways of knowing things than through the intellect.”

After class, as the students were putting away their blankets and blocks and bolsters, a few paused to speak to me. While some returned to the hallway to put on their shoes and leave, most congregated on the balcony beyond the sliding doors. An assortment of chairs with brightly colored cushions and a few beanbag chairs were ranged along a faded Indian carpet that ran the length of the balcony. At a table stacked with mugs and glasses, someone was pouring water and green tea as the students settled into what was evidently a comfortable postclass routine.

We cats are not fond of too much noise or movement, so I waited until they were all seated before slipping silently from the stool and making my way out to the balcony next to Serena. The final rays of the setting sun had turned the mountains a gleaming coral red.

“Trying to breathe through discomfort when we’re doing yoga is one thing,” a gravel-voiced woman called Merrilee was saying. She had joined the class almost at the end, as though she had really come only for the social part of the evening. And was it my imagination, or had she surreptitiously slipped something from a hip flask into her glass? “But what about when we’re not doing yoga and we have to deal with problems?” she asked.

“All is yoga,’” Ludo told her. “Usually we react to challenges in a habitual way, with anger or avoidance. By breathing through a challenge, we can arrive at a more useful response.”

“Isn’t anger or avoidance sometimes a useful reaction?” asked Ewing, an older American who was a longtime resident of McLeod Ganj. Occasionally he visited the Himalaya Book Café, where it was said that he had fled to India after some sort of tragedy back home. For many years he had played piano in the lobby of New Delhi’s Grand Hotel.

“A reaction is automatic, habitual,” Ludo said. “A response is considered. That’s the difference. What’s important is to create space, to open ourselves up to possibilities beyond the habitual, which rarely serve us well. Anger is never an enlightened response. We may be wrathful—speaking in mock-angry tones to stop a child who is about to step near a fire, for example—but that’s very different from real anger.”

“The problem,” observed a tall Indian man sitting next to Serena, “is that we get stuck in our comfort zone, even when it isn’t very comfortable.”

“Clinging to the familiar,” Seren

a agreed. “To things that used to give us such happiness but don’t anymore.”

I looked up at her, startled, when she said this. I was thinking of the beige fleece blanket in the bedroom and how memories of the many happy times I had spent on it with my little Snow Cub were now laced with sadness.

“Shantideva, the Indian Buddhist sage, talks about licking honey off the edge of a blade,” said Ludo. “No matter how sweet, the price we pay is much higher.”

“So how do we know,” asked Serena, “when something that has been positive in the past has outlived its usefulness?”

Ludo looked over at her with eyes so clear they seemed almost silver. “When it causes us to suffer,” he replied simply. “Suffer comes from a Latin word meaning to carry. And while pain is sometimes unavoidable, suffering is not. For instance, we may have a very happy relationship with someone, and then we lose the person. We feel pain, of course: that’s natural. But when we continue to carry that pain, feeling constantly bereft, that’s suffering.”

There was a pause while everyone absorbed this. In the deepening twilight, the mountains loomed in the distance, brooding shadows skimmed with vivid pink like the frosting on Mrs. Trinci’s cupcakes.

“I sometimes think the past is a dangerous place to go looking for happiness,” said the Indian man sitting next to Serena.

“You’re right, Sid,” agreed Ludo. “The only time we can experience happiness is in this moment, here and now.”

Later, the students began to drift away. Serena left with several others, and I followed her into the hall.

“I see little Swami is with you,” observed one of the women, slipping on her shoes.

“Yes. We know each other well. She spends a lot of time at the café. I’m giving her a lift back there now,” Serena said, picking me up.

“What’s her real name?” another woman asked.

“Oh, she’s a cat of many names. Everywhere she goes she seems to acquire another one.”

“Then today is no exception,” said Sid. Taking a yellow daisy from a vase in the hallway, he fashioned it into a flower garland and placed it around my neck. “I prostrate to you, little Swami,” he said, bringing his smooth, manicured hands together at his heart. As I looked into his eyes, I saw great tenderness.

Then he was opening the door for Serena, and we were making our way back down the hill.

“We are so lucky to have such a wonderful teacher,” said Serena.

“Yes,” agreed Sid. “Ludvig—Ludo—is exceptional.”

“My mother says he’s been in McLeod Ganj as long as I’ve been alive.”

Sid nodded. “Since the early ’60s. He came at the request of Heinrich Harrer.”

“Of Seven Years in Tibet fame?” asked Serena. “The Dalai Lama’s tutor?”