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

Sensing a movement on the stairs to the bookstore, Sam looked up to see him standing at the end of their table. “Geshe Wangpo!” he exclaimed, wide-eyed.

Sam and Serena both started to get to their feet.

“Stay!” Geshe Wangpo commanded, palms facing toward them both. “I am here only for a short time, yes?” He perched on the armrest of Sam’s sofa.

Geshe Wangpo was powerfully commanding, and his mere presence was enough to subdue everyone present into a state of meek compliance. As Serena made eye contact with Sam, Geshe Wangpo told them, “It is necessary to practice equanimity. When the mind is too much up and down there can be no happiness, no peace. This is not useful for self and”—he glanced pointedly at Serena—“not useful for others.”

After Serena glanced down, I felt the force of Geshe Wangpo’s gaze turn toward me, and it was as though I was an open book to him. He seemed to know exactly how I had felt about Venerable Monkey Face and the Cat Strangler. How I’d taken refuge in the café, frightened to return to Jokhang. How my usually boundless self-confidence had deserted me. As I gazed up at him, I sensed that he knew me as well as I knew myself.

Then Sam seemed to feel exposed and nodded ruefully. There could be no hiding from the self-evident truth.

After a moment, Serena spoke. “The problem is how.”

“How?”

“It’s so hard to stay level, to practice equanimity,” Serena said, “when there’s so much … stuff happening.”

“Four tools,” Geshe Wangpo said, looking at us each in turn. “First: impermanence. Never forget: this, too, will pass. The only thing you know for sure is that however things are now, they will change. If you feel bad now, no problem. Later you will feel better. You know this is true. It has always been true, correct? And it is still true now.”

They were nodding.

“Second: what is the point of worrying? If you can do something about it, fix it. If not, what is the point of worrying about it? Let go! Every minute you spend worrying, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. Don’t allow your thoughts to be like thieves, stealing your own contentment.

“Third: don’t judge. When you say ‘This is a bad thing that’s happening,’ how often are you wrong? Losing a job may be exactly what you need to start a more fulfilling career. The end of a relationship may open more possibilities than you even know exist. When it happens you think bad. Later you may think the best thing that ever happened. So don’t judge, no matter how bad it seems at the time. You may be completely wrong.”

Serena, Sam, and I stared at Geshe Wangpo, transfixed. In that moment he seemed like the Buddha himself, appearing directly in our midst to tell us exactly what we most needed to hear.

“Fourth: no swamp, no lotus. The most transcendent of flowers grows out of the filth of the swamp. Suffering is like the swamp. If it makes us more humble, more able to sympathize with others and more open to them, then we become capable of transformation and of becoming truly beautiful, like the lotus.

“Of course”—Geshe Wangpo rose from the armrest, having delivered his message—“I speak only of things on the surface of the ocean, the winds and storms that we all endure. But never forget”—he leaned across the table, touching his heart with his right hand—“deep down, under the surface, all is well. Mind is always pristine, boundless, radiant. The more you dwell in that place, the easier it will be to deal with temporary, surface things.”

Geshe Wangpo was communicating with more than words. He was also showing us their meaning. In that moment the deep-down, all-is-well-ness of which he spoke had a palpable reality. Then he left, as noiselessly and unnoticed as when he had arrived.

For a while Serena and Sam sat back in the sofas, stunned by what had just happened.

Sam was the first to speak. “That was … pretty amazing. The way he just appeared.”

Serena nodded with a smile.

“Seems he knows exactly what’s going on in your mind,” Sam continued.

“And not only when you’re with him,” Serena added.

Sam met her eyes for a long while, sharing her amazement.

“What he said was so right though,” she said, smiling. She seemed to be acknowledging that a cloud had lifted.

Sam nodded. “Irritatingly so.”

They both chuckled.

Kusali opened the front door, and an evening breeze rippled through the café. Over by the window, the last table of diners was preparing to leave.

I reflected on the significance of what Geshe Wangpo had said. Enduring happiness was only possible with equanimity. As long as our happiness depended on circumstances, it would be as fleeting and unreliable as the events themselves. Like wisps of discarded cat hair borne on the wind, our emotions would be tossed this way and that by forces quite beyond our control.

The tools for cultivating equanimity required no leap of faith. As Geshe Wangpo had explained them, they were self-evident. But at its heart, the essence of equanimity was familiarity with the nature of mind itself, something I knew must be developed through the practice of meditation. Geshe Wangpo had evidently mastered the practice. That much was apparent in the way the minds of others were so transparent to him—a natural consequence of his own mind being free of obscurations.

It was some time before Serena noticed. She looked quickly from Sam’s face to the sofa, then beneath the table, then across to the basket under the counter.