The Dalai Lama's Cat (18 page)

Lifting a perfumed handkerchief to her face, Mrs. Trinci was startled by this notion.

“It is good, very good, to acknowledge a problem with anger,” he continued.

“I’ve been high strung my whole life,” she said.

“Sometimes we know we need to change our behavior. But it requires some sort of shock for us to
realize
we must change. Starting now.”

“Sì
.” Mrs. Trinci gulped down another wave of tears. “But how?”

“Begin by considering the advantages of practicing patience and the disadvantages of not practicing it,” the Dalai Lama told her. “When one is angry, the first person to suffer is oneself. No one who is angry has a happy, peaceful mind.”

Mrs. Trinci looked at him intently with red-rimmed eyes.

“We also need to think about the impact on others. When we say hurtful things we don’t really mean, we can create deep wounds that can’t be healed. Think of all the rifts between friends and within families, divisions that have led to a complete breakdown in the relationship, all because of a single angry outburst.”

“I know!” Mrs. Trinci wailed.

“Next, we ask ourselves, where is this anger coming from? If the true cause of anger is the fridge or the gas or the lack of raspberries, then why isn’t everyone else angry at these things? You see, the anger isn’t coming from out there. It’s coming from our mind. And that is a good thing, because we can’t control everything around us in the world, but we can learn to control our own mind.”

“But I’ve always been an angry person,” confessed Mrs. Trinci.

“Are you angry right now?” asked His Holiness.

“No.”

“What does that tell you about the nature of an angry mind?”

For a long while Mrs. Trinci looked out the window at the temple rooftop, where the late afternoon sun had set the dharma chakra wheel and deer statue ablaze in gold. “I suppose that it comes and goes.”

“Exactly. It is not permanent. It is not part of you. You cannot say, ‘I’ve always been an angry person.’ Your anger arises, abides, and passes, just like anyone else’s. You may experience it more than others. And each time you give in to it, you feed the habit and make it more likely you will feel it again. Wouldn’t it be better, instead, to decrease its power?”

“Of course. But I can’t stop myself. I don’t set out to get angry. It just happens.”

“Tell me, are there some places, some situations, in which you are more likely to get angry than others?”

Mrs. Trinci’s reply was instant: “The kitchen.” She pointed downstairs.

“Very good,” the Dalai Lama said, clapping his hands together with a smile. “From now on, Jokhang kitchen is no longer an ordinary place for you. It is, instead, a Treasure House.

“Think of it,” His Holiness continued, “as a place where you will find many precious opportunities that are not available to you anywhere else.”

Mrs. Trinci was shaking her head. “
Non capisco
. I don’t understand.”

“You agree that the anger you experience is at least partly coming from within, yes?”

“Sì
.”

“And that it will be very beneficial to you—and everyone else—if you can gradually get rid of it?”

“Sì
.”

“For this to happen, you need opportunities to practice the opposing force, which is patience. Such opportunities will not often be provided by your friends. But you will find many of them here at Jokhang.”

“Sì, sì
!” She smiled ruefully.

“This is why you can call it a Treasure House. It offers
many
opportunities to cultivate patience and conquer anger. There is a word for this way of thinking.” His Holiness’s brow furrowed in concentration. “
Reframing
, we call it. Yes. Like that.”

“But what if I … fail?” Her voice was shaky.

“You keep trying. There are no instant results for a long-standing habit. But step by step you will definitely progress if you see the advantage.”

He looked at her anxious expression for a while before saying, “It helps if you have a calm mind. For that, meditation is most useful.”

“But I’m not a Buddhist.”

The Dalai Lama chuckled. “Meditation does not belong to Buddhists. People from every tradition meditate, and those who have no tradition benefit from it, too. You are a Catholic, and the Benedictine order has some most useful teachings on meditation. Perhaps you can try?”

As Mrs. Trinci’s audience came to an end, they stood.

“One day”—His Holiness took her hand and looked deep into her eyes—“perhaps you will see today as a turning point.”

Not trusting herself to speak, Mrs. Trinci only nodded as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

“When our understanding of something deepens to the point that it changes our behavior, in the Dharma we call this a
realization
. Perhaps today you have made a realization?”

“Sì, sì
, Your Holiness.” Emotion tugged at her lips. “I certainly have.”

“Remember the words of the Buddha: ‘Though one man may conquer a thousand men a thousand times in battle, he who conquers himself is the greatest warrior.’”

My own realization occurred only a few weeks later.

I should have heeded the first warning—a remark I overheard Tenzin make to Chogyal when I strolled into our office one day.

“HHC is filling out,” he said. It was typical Tenzin, an observation so oblique that I had only the vaguest idea what it actually meant, so I couldn’t possibly take offense.

No diplomatic training was needed when I returned to Jokhang kitchen the following week for dinner courtesy of Mrs. Trinci.

An unfamiliar air of serenity had pervaded the kitchen on every one of Mrs. Trinci’s visits since the Raspberry Sorbet Crisis. Not only did calm prevail that afternoon but Mrs. Trinci had even brought in a CD player from which the heavenly Sanctus chorus of Fauré’s
Requiem
floated through the afternoon.

Walking into the kitchen, I greeted her with a friendly meow. I didn’t jump onto the counter for the simple reason that I knew I wouldn’t make it. So I looked at it instead.

Attentive as ever, Mrs. Trinci picked me up.

“Oh, poor little
dolce mio
, you can’t jump up any more!” she exclaimed, smooching me demonstratively. “It’s because you’ve put on so much weight.”

I’ve
what
?

“You’re overeating.”

She can’t be serious! Was this any way to talk to The Most Beautiful Creature That Ever Lived? To Tesorino? To Cara Mia?

“You’ve become a real piggly-wiggly.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. The very idea was preposterous.

Piggly-wiggly?
Me?!

I would have bitten deep into that tender spot between her thumb and index finger if it weren’t for the succulent wonder of the lamb shanks in rich gravy that she placed in front of me. Lapping up the piquant sauce, I was instantly engrossed in the savory stickiness of it. Mrs. Trinci’s bizarre and cruel remarks went completely out of my head.

An even greater humiliation was needed for me to face up to my expanding problem. Returning from a morning visit to the temple with His Holiness, I started up the stairs to our private quarters. Because my hind legs are so wobbly, I need to make this ascent at some speed. But in recent weeks, achieving the required velocity had become more and more of a challenge.

That morning, as it happened, it was a challenge too big.

As I leaped up the first few steps, I could sense that my usual energy was failing me. I made it to steps two and three, but instead of accelerating, something seemed to be holding me back. The usual buildup of momentum just wasn’t happening.

At the critical moment, when I was about to reach the midpoint of the flight, instead of sprawling on the landing in a safe, if undignified heap, I found myself in midair, paws flailing desperately for contact. In surreal slow motion, I was tumbling backward and onto my side. I landed heavily, half on one step, half on the step below. Then, lurching lopsided and backward down the staircase, I made a terrifying and ignominious descent, only coming to a halt at His Holiness’s feet.

Within moments the Dalai Lama was carrying me to our room. The vet was summoned. A towel was draped over His Holiness’s desk, and I was subjected to a full examination. Dr. Guy Wilkinson didn’t take long to conclude that while I was physically unharmed by the fall, and in every other respect the very model of good health, there was one particular area in which my health was seriously off kilter: I was carrying far too much weight.

How much was I being fed every day? he wanted to know.

That was a question none of His Holiness’s staff could fully answer and not one I cared to respond to directly. Humiliated enough by the tumble, I had no wish to embarrass myself further by revealing the full extent of my uncurbed appetite.

But the truth came out.

Tenzin made a few well-directed phone calls, and by the end of the day, he reported to the Dalai Lama that in addition to the two meals a day I was supplied at Jokhang, I was eating three elsewhere.

A new regime was soon agreed on. Henceforth, Mrs. Trinci and Café Franc were directed to feed me half portions. I was to receive no food at all from Mrs. Patel. In the course of a few hours, my daily regime had been subjected to drastic and permanent change.

How did I feel about all of this? Had I been asked about my eating habits, I would have admitted that they should be improved. I would have readily conceded that yes, five meals a day was an excessive amount for one small—but not small enough—cat. I had known all along that I should cut down. But my knowledge had been intellectual until my humiliating tumble. Only then did that understanding become a
realization
that would change my behavior.

Life, post-tumble, would never be the same again.

That night, in the cozy darkness of bed, I felt His Holiness’s hand reach out. All it took was his touch, and I’d purr with contentment.

“It’s been a hard day, little Snow Lion,” he whispered. “But things will get better from here. When we see for ourselves there is a problem, change becomes much easier.”

And indeed it did. After the initial shock of smaller meal portions and the absence of any food at all outside Cut Price Bazaar, it was only a matter of days before I began to feel less lethargic. Within weeks, there was a new spring to my wobbly step.

Soon, I was again able to hop up on the kitchen bench. And never again did I tumble down the stairs to our quarters at Jokhang.

One Friday morning, a rectangular polystyrene box addressed to Mrs. Trinci arrived at Jokhang by courier. It was taken directly to the kitchen, where she was preparing a meal for the prime minister of India to the accompaniment of Andrea Bocelli. Surprised by the unexpected delivery, she called out to that day’s
sous chef
, “Bring me a knife to open this, will you, Treasure?”

It was the term she now typically used—only sometimes through gritted teeth. While her effusive manner was much the same as it always had been, her anger arose more in the form of lightning flashes of irritation than in volcanic eruptions.

And in a curious way, it seemed that she was already being rewarded for her self-restraint. Just recently she’d heard from her daughter, Serena, who had trained as a chef in Italy before spending several years working at a variety of Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe. Mrs. Trinci was beyond pleased to learn that Serena had decided she’d had enough of Europe for a while. In just a few weeks she would be back home in McLeod Ganj.