The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring (16 page)

That night as I curled up on the bed I usually shared with the Dalai Lama, I contemplated the extraordinary insights into the mind revealed by Yogi Tarchin. And I realized that true happiness is only possible with a panoramic understanding of mind. A limited, bag-of-bones view, as he put it, could only ever yield limited happiness—passing sensory pleasures, temporary contentment, experiences that blaze for a few glorious moments before dying away. But the feeling of profound well-being in people like Yogi Tarchin and His Holiness was so strong you could actually feel it. And it had nothing to do with temporary pleasures: Yogi Tarchin hadn’t had any of those for 12 years! No, this feeling was oceanic, enduring, profound—happiness of a very different order.

There is an air of impending danger when His Holiness returns to the room. He is young, in his mid-20s. Accompanying him is an older Tibetan lady with a kind but fearless face. Her brocade shawl is gathered at the neck with a turquoise clasp. She carries herself like a queen.

Following the two are a number of attendant monks, moving urgently about the room. They gather up papers, pack personal items into cases, roll up the intricately woven rugs. I recognize one of them as a very young Geshe Wangpo. They are in a great hurry.

Lying on the sill, I have been looking out of the window of the Potala Palace, across Lhasa to where mountains rise on the other side of the valley. As the Dalai Lama enters the room I lift my head to watch.

Feeling a slight itchiness, I raise my right rear leg reflexively and scratch myself several times. Looking down I see that my leg is short and covered in course, shaggy fur. My tail is also short, with a plume of woolly hair. Instead of retractable claws, my nails are wide and blunt. His Holiness comes over and picks me up. “This is the day we have all feared,” he whispers softly in my ear. “The Red Army is invading Tibet. The decision has been made, and I must leave Lhasa as soon as possible. My advance party can’t carry you with us through the mountains. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone. But Khandro-la will take the very best care of you here in Tibet. She will look after you, as if you were me.”

Now I know why the lady with the turquoise clasp has come. There is a moment of intense heartache. Is it emanating from the Dalai Lama or from me?

Turning away, so that it’s just the two of us looking out the window and down the valley, His Holiness whispers, “I don’t know how long I will have to be away. But I promise I will find you again, my little one.” There is a pause before he continues, “Even if not in this lifetime, then
definitely
in a future one.”

As this is happening, I know my dream is a dream.

Only it isn’t. I am also being allowed a brief, unobstructed glimpse into my past.

As a dog …

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

ME?!?!

I won’t pretend, dear reader, to have been anything but astounded by the dream. However, after the meeting with Yogi Tarchin I had no doubt about the truth of what I had seen. For a few extraordinary moments, I had been able to tune in to a previous experience of consciousness.

Then it was gone.

Waking up early the next morning, I remembered Yogi Tarchin talking about “the good fortune to have a teacher who can reach through this agitation.” And I knew that wherever in the world the Dalai Lama happened to be, the dream had been a gift. An affirmation of the bond that drew me to him—a bond, I was startled to discover, that reached back to a previous lifetime.

Perhaps I should not be so amazed. Was it not conventional Buddhist teaching that the law of cause and effect, or karma, spans many lifetimes? The reason why good things happen to bad beings and bad things to good beings doesn’t necessarily arise from causes they have created in this particular lifetime. As I had just experienced, only the flimsiest of veils prevents us from reviewing, with perfect clarity, previous moments of consciousness. And what was the passage of a few decades in the context of beginningless time but a momentary leap from one place to another? Nevertheless, the dream opened the door to possibilities I had never considered, such as who I had been in previous lifetimes.

And
what!

A Lhasa Apso in 1959, it seems, when the Dalai Lama was forced into exile.

The idea that I had been a dog was deeply disconcerting. It certainly put into perspective my woes about the fact that my impeccable Himalayan breeding was undocumented. Bloodlines, pedigree, and so forth suddenly paled in significance compared to the much more important matter of where my consciousness had been, what it had experienced, and what it had done, the effects of which I was experiencing in the here and now. As much as I, like other felines, see our species as altogether superior to canines, one thing I cannot deny is that dogs have consciousness. Like cats and humans they fall into the category of
sem chens,
Tibetan for
mind-havers.

In the curious way that a number of seemingly unrelated events can sometimes occur around the same time in your life, pointing you toward a single, unmistakable truth, within days of the dream I was eavesdropping on the most intriguing conversation down at the Himalaya Book Café. The person leading the conversation wasn’t one of Sam’s book-club speakers, although he was as well-known as the best of them. A biologist from one of Britain’s top universities, he was a research fellow whose studies of memory and consciousness had been published in books that were bestsellers worldwide. Visiting McLeod Ganj he just happened to walk past the café. It was 10
A.M.
, and he decided he was in the mood for a cup of coffee. Stepping inside, he couldn’t avoid a large poster of himself above an even larger stack of his latest book. Wearing precisely the same tweed jacket, forest-green shirt, and corduroy trousers as in the photo, he paused to stare at it and then realized that behind the counter, Sam was looking from the poster to him and back again.

Catching each other’s eyes, they both laughed.

Then Sam came down the steps, hand extended. “A great honor to have you in the store,” he said. “If I’d known …”

“I just happened to be walking past,” the biologist told him in his clipped English accent. “I didn’t know about this place.”

“I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I’m a
big
fan of your work!” Sam told him. “I’ve been following you for years. We have all your books.” He gestured to the shelves behind him. “Would you mind signing a few?”

“Delighted,” the visitor said.

Sam led him to the counter, grabbing a handful of books on the way and offering him a pen. “If I’d known you were coming to Dharamsala, I would have invited you to speak to our book club.”

“Just a flying visit,” said the scientist.

Sam pressed on. “So many people here would be fascinated to meet you.” As the author worked his way through the pile of books, a thought struck Sam. “I don’t suppose you’re free at lunchtime today, are you? I could invite a few people.”

“I have a meeting at eleven that I expect won’t last much more than an hour or so,” the biologist said. “After that, as it happens, I’m free for a little while.”

By the time the scientist returned there were ten people seated at a table near the bookstore, waiting to have lunch with him. Along with Serena and Bronnie, the group included Ludo and some of his yoga students, Lobsang from Jokhang, and a couple of others I recognized from the book club. As usual, the mood in the café was lively and upbeat; and when the guest arrived, he was welcomed as a much-honored friend. Meals were ordered, drinks poured, and as everyone waited for their food, Sam turned to the biologist and asked, “Are you able to share with us what you’re working on at the moment?”

“Certainly,” he said. “An avenue of research I’ve been exploring for many years is the sentience of animals—what consciousness means in nonhuman beings and how it differs from ours.”

“Like the way dogs can hear pitches that we can’t?” asked one of the book-club members.

“Differences in perception are part of it,” offered the guest. “And it’s interesting how animals are increasingly being used for their perceptive skills. We’re all quite used to guide dogs for the blind, but now we’re seeing much broader applications—for example, diabetes service dogs that alert people to hypoglycemia by detecting odor changes in their breath.

“And then,” he continued, “there are the marked improvements that have been reported in patients with cerebral palsy, autism, and Down syndrome after direct encounters with dolphins. What is it about these particular creatures that can create such dramatic changes? It has been established that the perceptual consciousness of dolphins is in some ways greatly superior to that of humans. What’s more, cetaceans are the only mammals other than humans that clearly demonstrate vocal learning. By better understanding the perceptual and communication powers of dolphins could we develop different treatment modalities for patients with cerebral palsy?”

Sukie from the yoga studio couldn’t contain herself. “I heard a story of a woman who had an experience swimming with dolphins. A dolphin kept nudging her in the abdomen, then without warning it flipped her so that she landed on her back on the surface of the water. She was winded but okay, though she was taken to the ER as a precaution. When they did a scan they found a tumor in her stomach exactly where the dolphin had nudged her. Fortunately, it was treatable.”

The biologist nodded. “There are many such stories, and part of my work is collecting these in a database and having them properly investigated. As you’re suggesting, there are many aspects of nonhuman sentience that go beyond our current understanding but could be extraordinarily useful.

“Animal precognition is well established,” the scientist pointed out. “Since the earliest times, people have recorded unusual animal behavior before earthquakes. Wild and domesticated animals become fearful or anxious, dogs howl, birds take flight. A fascinating example was recorded by a biologist studying the mating behavior of toads in San Ruffino Lake in central Italy. He found that the number of male toads in a breeding group fell from more than 90 to almost none within just a few days. Then there was a 6.4 magnitude earthquake followed by aftershocks. The toads didn’t return for another 10 days. It appears that days in advance they had detected what was about to happen.”

“Earth tremors. Maybe the toads have especially sensitive feet?” someone suggested.

“If so, you would think that seismologists would pick up the same thing,” said the scientist. “Maybe there was some subtle change in the electrical field that they picked up. But you know, it’s not just toads who have this ability. The big tsunami that hit Asia in December 2004 was anticipated by many different species. There were reports of elephants in Sri Lanka and Sumatra moving to higher ground long before the waves struck, and buffalo doing something similar. Dog owners found that their dogs didn’t want to go near the beach for their usual morning walk.”

“A tsunami alert system could be created using animals,” proposed Ludo.

“I’ve suggested that myself,” the biologist said.