The Dalai Lama's Cat

by David Michie

I was beginning to realize that just because an idea is simple, it isn’t necessarily easy to follow. Purring in agreement with high-sounding principles meant nothing unless I actually lived by them.

“Sometimes our instinct, our negative conditioning, can be overpowering. Later we regret very much what we have done. But that is no reason to give up on yourself

This proves that it is not so much the circumstances of our lives that make us happy or unhappy but the way we see them.”

“Most people think that their only option is to change their circumstances. But these are not the true causes of their unhappiness. It has more to do with the way they think about their circumstances.”

It was not my circumstances that were causing me distress but my belief about these circumstances. By letting go of the unhappiness-creating belief that I needed another cat, I would convert my jail into a monastery.

“The main shift, you see, is from placing self at the center of our thoughts to putting others there.

It is—what do you say?—a paradox that the more we can focus our thoughts on the well-being of others, the happier we become. The first one to benefit is oneself. I call this being wisely selfish.”

“A man arrives home to find a huge pile of sheep manure has been dumped on his front yard. He didn’t order the manure. He does not want it. But somehow, it is there, and his only choice now is to decide what to do with it. He can put it in his pockets and walk around all day complaining to everyone about what happened. But if he does this, people will start avoiding him after a while. More useful is if he spreads the manure on his garden.

“We all face this same choice when dealing with problems. We don’t ask for them. We don’t want them. But the way we deal with them is what’s most important. If we are wise, the greatest problems can lead to the greatest insights.”

I also discovered that I felt a lot happier not being jealous. Envy and resentment were demanding emotions that had disturbed my own peace of mind. For my sake, too, there was little point in being consumed by unhappy and irrational feelings.

“I suppose,” continued Tenzin, “the difficulty is that karma is not instantly apparent. It can take time for causes to yield effects. Because of this, it may seem that there is no relationship between cause and effect.”

Because you give someone something one day doesn’t mean you have created the cause to receive exactly the same thing another day. Karma operates not so much as some external credit-and-debit ledger but more as an energy, a charge that grows over time. This is how even small acts of generosity, especially when motivated by the best intention, can become causes for much greater wealth in the future.”

Our experience of reality is a lot more subjective than we generally realize. We are not simply passive receptors of events. At all times we are actively projecting our own personal version of reality onto the world around us. Two people in the same circumstances will have very different experiences of what happened. This is because they have different karma.

‘The thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed; the deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings … As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.’”

“We don’t stop thinking about ourselves the whole time. Even when this makes us unhappy and uptight. If we focus too much on ourselves, we make ourselves sick. We have this constant inner chatter going morning, noon, and night, this inner monologue. But paradoxically, the more we are able to think about making other beings happy, the happier we become ourselves.”

“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.”