The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring (11 page)

It took Tenzin—and me—the longest time to digest this news. Chogyal, our Chogyal, dead? He had been bustling around this office only three days ago. And still so young: he couldn’t have been much older than 35.

“He had a very good death,” said Geshe Wangpo. “We can be confident that his continuum has moved forward in a positive direction. Even so, there will be special prayers in the temple tonight, and you may find it useful to make offerings.”

Tenzin nodded. “Of course.”

As Geshe Wangpo looked from Tenzin to me and back again, his usually stern demeanor softened into an expression of great tenderness. “It is natural to feel sadness, grief, when we lose someone we care for. And Chogyal was a very, very kind man. But you do not have to feel sorry for Chogyal’s sake. He lived well. Even though death came unexpectedly, he had nothing to fear. He died well, too. He set a good example for us all.”

With that, Geshe Wangpo turned and left the office.

Tenzin leaned forward in his chair and closed his eyes for a while, then got up and came over to the filing cabinet. He reached up and stroked me. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, HHC?” His eyes welled with tears. “Dear, kind Chogyal.”

A short while later Lobsang appeared. He crossed the room to where Tenzin was still stroking me. “Geshe-la just told me the news,” he said. “I am very sorry.”

The two men embraced, Lobsang in his monk’s robes, Tenzin in his dark suit. As they separated, Lobsang said, “Five hours in the clear light!”

“Yes, that’s what Geshe-la said.”

The process of dying is the subject of detailed preparation in Tibetan Buddhism. I often heard His Holiness talk about clear light as the natural state of our mind when it’s free of all thought. Because it is a state beyond concept, words can only point to the experience of it; they cannot describe the indescribable. But the words sometimes used to suggest this state are
boundless, radiant, blissful.
It is a state imbued with love and compassion.

Seasoned meditators can experience clear light while still alive, so that when death comes, instead of fearing the loss of their personal identity, they are able to abide in this state of blissful nonduality. With such a level of control that it is possible to direct the mind to what happens next, rather than being propelled by the force of habitual mental activity, by karma.

Even though someone has been declared dead from a medical point of view, while abiding in a state of clear light their body remains supple and their healthy coloring remains. There is no putrefaction of the body or loss of body fluids. To others, it looks as if the deceased is simply asleep. Great yogis have been known to remain in clear light for days, even weeks.

Geshe Wangpo’s assurance that Chogyal had been able to abide in the clear light was therefore news of the utmost significance. His life may have been short, but what he had done with it was beyond measure: he would be able to assume some control over his destiny.

Tenzin reached into his drawer, taking out a mobile phone and putting it in his pocket—always a prelude to his leaving the office.

“I’m going to feed some birds,” he told Lobsang.

“Good idea,” the other monk said. “I’ll come with you, if I may.”

The two of them walked toward the door.

“That’s the main thing right now, isn’t it?” observed Lobsang. “Doing whatever we can to help the one who has left us.”

Tenzin nodded. “And even if he doesn’t need our help so much, it is good to have something positive to focus on.”

“Exactly,” agreed Lobsang. “Something instead of oneself.”

The sound of their voices retreated as they made their way down the corridor. I was left alone on the filing cabinet, thinking about the fact that I would never see Chogyal again. He would never walk through the door, sit in the chair opposite Tenzin, and take out the yellow highlighter that he thought was a pen for marking documents, but I knew was really a toy that could be flicked from the desktop onto the carpet.

I thought, too, about the last time Chogyal had held me, and I had stuck my claws into his arm. Unhappy with him for removing the beige blanket and with it the last evidence of my daughter, I had been mean and miserable. It was not the last memory of me I would have wanted him to have, but it was too late to change. I could only console myself with the knowledge that most of our time together had been happy. When karma drew us together in a future life, as it had in this one, the energy between us would be positive.

From the sill that evening I watched the Namgyal monks make their way across the courtyard alongside the townspeople streaming through the monastery gates. I hadn’t realized that the prayers for Chogyal were open to the public, or how well-known and well-loved Chogyal had been in the community.

As more and more people arrived, I decided that I, too, would attend. I made my way downstairs and across the courtyard, and it wasn’t long before I was ambling up the temple steps with a group of elderly nuns.

There is something especially magical about the temple at night. And that night, the large statues of Buddha at the front of the temple, with their beautiful, gold-painted faces, were illuminated by a sea of flickering butter lamps, every one dedicated for the benefit of Chogyal and all living beings. Other traditional offerings—food, incense, perfume, and flowers—were part of the same feast of the senses that made my whiskers tingle with delight.

I looked around at the great wall
thangkas
with their vivid depictions of deities like Maitreya, the Buddha of the future; Manjushri, the Buddha of wisdom; Green Tara; Mahakhala, the Dharma protector; the Medicine Buddha; and the revered teacher Lama Tsongkhapa. In the subdued nighttime lighting, the figures seemed somehow closer than during the day, hovering presences looking down from their lotus thrones.

I had seldom seen as many people in the temple as were there that night. From the elderly lamas and rinpoches sitting at the front to the other monks and nuns and the townspeople seated farther back, they took up every available space. One of the nuns I had arrived with found a place for me on a low shelf at the back of the temple from which I could survey everything that happened. People lit butter lamps, brought their hands together in prayer, and murmured to one another in low voices, giving the evening a powerful sense of occasion. Yes, there was a feeling of loss, of course, and deep sadness but another, quite different undercurrent as well. Word of Chogyal remaining in clear light had obviously gone out, and amid the grief there was a quiet pride, even celebration, that he had had such a good death.

Geshe Wangpo’s arrival was greeted with an immediate, awed hush. He took his place on the teaching throne—the raised seat at the front of the temple—and led the assembled in a chant before guiding us in a short meditation. There was silence in the temple but not stillness. Rather, a curious energy seemed to pervade the space. Was it just my feline sensitivity that felt the power of hundreds of minds focused on Chogyal’s well-being? Could the collective intention of so many accomplished meditators who knew Chogyal so well reach out and benefit him at this very moment?

Geshe Wangpo ended the meditation with the gentle chiming of a bell. After reading a short message from the Dalai Lama, who had sent his personal condolences and special blessings from America, he talked about Chogyal in the traditional Tibetan way, speaking about his family in Kham, a province in Eastern Tibet, and the monastic studies he had begun at an early age, then reciting some of the key teachings Chogyal had received.

Geshe Wangpo was always scrupulous about following tradition. But he also knew how to reach an audience, many of whom were not monastics but ordinary householders. “Chogyal was only thirty-five when he died,” he said softly. “If we are to learn anything from his death, and I have no doubt he would want us to, we should realize that death can strike any of us at any moment. Most of the time we don’t want to think about this. We accept that death will happen, of course, but we think of it as something that will happen far in the future. This way of thinking”—Geshe Wangpo paused for emphasis—“is unfortunate. Buddha himself said that the most important meditation of all is on death. It is not morbid, not depressing to contemplate one’s own death. Completely the opposite! It is only when we have faced the reality of our own death that we really know how to live.

“Living as though we are going to go on forever—this is a tragic waste,” he continued. “One of my students, a lady who suffered from stage four cancer, came very close to death last year. When I visited her in the hospital, she was just a frail shadow in a bed, hooked up to all kinds of tubes and equipment. Happily, however, she succeeded in her battle against the disease. And just recently she told me something very interesting: the disease had been the greatest gift she had ever received, she said, for the first time she truly faced her own death—and only then did she realize how precious it is simply to be alive.”

Geshe Wangpo paused to allow his message to sink in.

“Now she wakes up every day with a sense of profound gratitude to be here now, free of disease. Every day for her is a bonus. She is more content and at peace with herself. She doesn’t worry so much about material things, knowing that these are of only limited, short-term value. She has become a very enthusiastic meditator because she knows from direct experience that whatever happens to her body, consciousness remains.

“The practices given to us in the Dharma help us take charge of our consciousness. Instead of being victims of mental agitation and habitual patterns of thinking, we have a precious opportunity to free ourselves and realize the true nature of our mind.
This
we can take with us. Not our friends, not our loved ones, not our possessions. But awakening to the reality of consciousness as boundless, radiant, and beyond death is an enduring achievement. And with that awareness we realize we have nothing to fear from death.” A mischievous smile appeared on his face. “We discover that death, like everything in life itself, is merely a concept.”

Geshe Wangpo raised a hand to his heart. “I wish that all of my students could nearly die. There is no better wake-up call on how to live. Perhaps some students, like Chogyal, do not need this. He was a most diligent practitioner, with a warm heart and the incredibly good karma to work closely with His Holiness for some years. Those of us who have the benefit of contact with His Holiness should not underestimate this.”

I wondered if Geshe-la was addressing this last comment to me. Sometimes when I heard him in the
gompa,
the monastery, it seemed that much of what he was saying was directed specifically at me. As the being who spends more time with the Dalai Lama than almost any other, what did that say about
my
karma?

“We will continue to remember Chogyal in our prayers and meditations, especially for the next seven weeks,” Geshe Wangpo continued, referring to the maximum period during which it is thought that consciousness remains in the
bardo,
the state between the end of one existence and the start of another. “And we should thank him, in our hearts, for reminding us that life is tenuous and may end at any time,” he emphasized.

“In the Dharma we have the term
realization
. A realization is when our understanding of something deepens to the point that it changes our behavior. I hope that Chogyal’s death helps us all come to the realization that we, too, will die. Such a realization helps us to let go a little, to experience deep appreciation, even awe, just to be alive. We cannot procrastinate with our Dharma practice: time is precious and we must use it wisely.

“Those of us here tonight are among the most fortunate in the world, because we know the practices that can help transform consciousness and our experience of death itself. If we are as dedicated as Chogyal, when death comes, we will have nothing to fear. And while we are still alive … how wonderful!”

The next morning, while sitting on the sill, I noticed Tenzin crossing the courtyard half an hour earlier than usual. Instead of making his way straight to the office as he typically did, he went to the temple, where he started the day with a meditation session.