Prologue

Also by David Michie

Fiction

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The Dalai Lama’s Cat

The Dalai Lama’s Cat and The Art of Purring

The Dalai Lama’s Cat and The Power of Meow

The Dalai Lama’s Cat and The Four Paws of Spiritual Success

The Dalai Lama’s Cat: Awaken the Kitten Within

Matt Lester Spiritual Thrillers

The Magician of Lhasa

The Secret Mantra

Other Fiction

The Queen’s Corgi

The Astral Traveler’s Handbook & Other Tales

Nonfiction

Buddhism for Busy People: Finding Happiness in an Uncertain World

Hurry Up and Meditate:
Your Starter Kit for Inner Peace and Better Health

Enlightenment to Go:
Shantideva and the Power of Compassion to Transform Your Life

Mindfulness is Better than Chocolate

Buddhism for Pet Lovers:
Supporting our Closest Companions through Life and Death

First published in 2022

Copyright © Mosaic Reputation Management (Pty) Ltd 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, or otherwise be copied for public or private use (other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews) without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents appearing in this work are the sole expression, opinion and product of the author’s imagination only, are entirely fictitious and do not represent and are not based on any real life views of any character or event in any way whatsoever; any resemblance is strictly coincidental. Any and all references and depictions appearing in this work to real life persons, living or deceased, are based solely and entirely on the author’s imagination and are in no way a representation of, or bear any resemblance to, the actual views, events or opinions of such persons.

Conch Books, an imprint of Mosaic Reputation Management (Pty) Ltd

Cover design: Sue Campbell Book Design

Author photo: Janmarie Michie

ISBN 978-0-6488665-8-9 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-6488665-6-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-0-6488665-7-2 (e-book)

Homage

With heartfelt gratitude to my precious gurus:
Les Sheehy, extraordinary source of inspiration and wisdom;
Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden, peerless master and embodiment of the Dharma;
Zasep Tulku Rinpoche, precious Vajra Acharya and yogi.

Guru is Buddha, Guru is Dharma, Guru is Sangha,
Guru is the source of all happiness.
To all gurus I prostrate, make offerings and go for refuge.

May this book carry waves of inspiration from my own gurus
To the hearts and minds of countless living beings.

May all beings have happiness and the true causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and
the true causes of suffering;
May all beings never be parted from the happiness that is without suffering, the great joy of nirvana liberation;
May all beings abide in peace and equanimity, their minds free from attachment and aversion, and free from indifference.

All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

—Arthur Schopenhauer (Philosopher, 1788—1860)

Prologue

The Day Before

Omni, Colorado

No one could remember when the guru came to live at the top of the mountain. Some distance out of the small but picturesque town of Omni, his home was little more than a summer shack. He had no phone, TV or radio. He subsisted on an austere diet of vegetables and who knows what, from the modest stipend he earned teaching meditation. He drank no alcohol, nor was he ever seen buying the kind of tasty indulgences that most people found necessary for a feeling of contentment. A man of indeterminate age who looked fifty-something but may well have been older, he was a being of few needs. But if asked who was the happiest person they knew, the good townsfolk of Omni—and even the not-so-good ones—would immediately and unanimously have answered: “Lama Tashi.”

Although his home was secluded, not far from Rocky Mountain National Park, the guru was no recluse. He held weekly classes at the Lone Pine Meditation Center. A few times a month he’d come into town to collect his frugal provisions. Guiding a shopping cart round the grocery store, when he encountered another person he always made eye contact, nodded in acknowledgement, and smiled. And at such moments, a remarkable thing happened. The person meeting his eyes would melt.

It didn’t matter what state of mind they were in. Whether they were hurrying or weary or diligently working their way through their shopping list. When they encountered Lama Tashi they experienced a sudden jolt. An unexpected and powerful reminder about who and what they truly were. It was hard to put this experience into words. How, with a single glance, they came to recognize an important truth about themselves. It was as if this man effortlessly saw beyond the appearance they usually took themselves to be, and reflected back a more panoramic reality. Whatever trials they may be facing, whatever the constraints that so preoccupied them became like mere froth on the ocean surface—ephemeral and inconsequential compared to the boundless reality below. And so benevolent was Lama Tashi’s expression, so wholehearted his acceptance that they’d feel an up-welling of joy. In his warm, brown eyes was all the reassurance they needed that, beneath the surface, all was well.

Such was the effect of Lama Tashi’s presence that, even in the early days, he was never on the receiving end of the apprehension which members of small communities often felt about outsiders. Lama Tashi had Asian features, wore red robes and never made any pretense that while living in their world he was self-evidently not of it. But he was never shunned for being different. On the contrary, he was actively sought out.

Pauline Taylor, who lived with a menagerie of rescue animals on the outskirts of town, kept an eye out for Lama Tashi’s ancient, lime-green Volvo on the road into town, leaving home at the most opportune moment to engineer an encounter with him. Tears welling in her eyes, she told anyone who cared to listen that she had never felt such unconditional love as the time she’d first bumped into Lama Tashi in the Household Detergents aisle.

Professor Hawke, retired from Princeton, who refused to slum it intellectually with just about everyone, used to collar Lama Tashi any time he saw him, insisting he join him for coffee at The Good Roast, and demand answers to arcane questions of quantum mechanics.

Even Margarita Moore, whose staunch views on anyone who wasn’t Born Again, heterosexual, and a vigorous supporter of the Second Amendment were well known, was once seen holding hands with Lama Tashi outside her church, ardently agreeing that there is only one ultimate reality, and if we wish to experience it, first we must let go of our tightly-held view of self. In that moment, what the guru said seemed—even to her—to be so overwhelmingly obvious that she couldn’t possibly disagree.

Within hours, as the impact of his presence began to dissipate, she slid back into her habitual convictions. But at the time what an extraordinary vision it had been to behold!

So popular was Lama Tashi around town that people joked how an endorsement by the guru on the mountain would guarantee electoral success. When someone had questioned if he might himself consider running for office his face had crinkled, silvering goatee wobbled, and he had belly-laughed with appreciative gusto, as if the suggestion was deliberately and hilariously idiotic. Which in a kind of way it was. But in another kind of way, wasn’t.

The idea of having Lama Tashi as their representative in City Hall or Congress or even—why the heck not?—the Senate, was an idea that once suggested refused to go away. From time to time someone would ask him, “Would you consider being our Mayor, Lama Tashi?” Or “Would you run for Congress?” And he always replied in the same, cryptic manner. Meeting his questioner in the eye with a warmly encouraging expression he would say, “You are asking the wrong question, my friend. It is important to ask a useful question if we wish to receive a useful answer.”

While Lama Tashi was no hermit, he didn’t dawdle when he came to town, nor did he frequent the coffee shops or restaurants unless practically dragged there by the likes of Professor Hawke. As a result, no one had much idea about the practices that had given rise to his particular presence, that seemingly magical aura he emanated wherever he went. Over the years, on the few occasions he had been asked what he believed, he answered in a way designed to benefit the person asking, using words offering that most precious of all gifts: hope.

To Kathy Branton, a young woman who concealed an abused childhood beneath a prickly exterior, he said simply that he believed in loving-kindness. Had anyone else mouthed such a saccharine sentiment, Kathy would have bristled. But so unfeigned was the guru’s presence, so unreserved the compassion in his eyes, that she came away feeling curiously uplifted.

Asked by Maria Flavio, a lapsed and very guilty Catholic, he had pointed upwards to where the spring sky was a vaulted sweep of pure blue from one horizon to the other. “We are like this,” he told her. “Perfectly clear. No matter what clouds pass through, or how long they remain, they have no power to taint our true nature. That always remains pristine and radiant.”

As Maria had walked away from the encounter she felt a sublime lightness, as if a burden she had been unwittingly carrying around on her shoulders for her whole life had been suddenly and unexpectedly removed.

Sometimes, Lama Tashi didn’t use words at all. Beckoned by Darius Styles, Gwen and Angelo’s teenage son who suffered from cerebral palsy, Lama Tashi stepped over to where the boy was slumped in his wheelchair in dappled sunshine outside a convenience store, waiting for his mother. Physically, Darius’s body was misshapen but there was little wrong with his mind. He had seen Lama Tashi around town before, in his distinctive robes.

As the guru approached, Darius asked a question in sounds the lama couldn’t possibly unravel—at least, not by way of hearing. But it didn’t matter. Lama Tashi reached out, taking him by his right hand, and looked into his eyes.

To begin with Darius was awkwardly self-conscious, and not simply on account of being in the presence of a stranger wearing strange clothes. Being more sensitive than most to non-verbal communication, there was something about the simple goodness of the guru he found, at first, almost too much to bear.

But after a while, Darius looked up to meet his gaze. And when he did, it wasn’t long before he was smiling also. Still holding onto the lama with his own right hand, he shifted himself in his chair so that with his left he was able to reach up and, with the tips of his fingers, touch his heart.

Lama Tashi nodded.

It had been one of the very few unchaperoned exchanges Darius had had in his life. And the most meaningful.

In such ways, Lama Tashi’s constant offering to the people among whom he lived, was his gift of hope. Hope to inspire insight and self-acceptance. Hope to create positive change.

Just as he defied the usual conventions of belief, there was similar ambiguity about why he had chosen to be part of their particular community. To participants at the Lone Pine Meditation Center he would say that he was there to help them experience the true nature of their own minds. To Tom and Tina Jackson, his Vulture Peak Drive neighbors, he explained that his cabin was an ideal place to meditate.

The only being to whom he revealed more of the truth was his cabin companion, a Siamese cat named Shanti. Like so much else in Lama Tashi’s life, Shanti hadn’t arrived through any deliberate act on his part and instead had spontaneously appeared. One day she simply stepped through the open window when he was meditating and curled up next to him. She never chose to leave.

From time to time Lama Tashi reached out to where Shanti was basking in the summer sun on his windowsill. Or, in the evenings, to where she might be toasting herself in front of the fire.

“Ah yes, this is the most beautiful place to wait, isn’t it, my dear Shanti?” he stroked her luxuriant tummy. “The most perfect place to bide our time.”

What, exactly, they were biding their time for was not a subject on which he elaborated. Nor did she much care, so long as he continued biding it with her. And stroking her tummy, of course.

The afternoon before that most extraordinary of days, Lama Tashi set off in the direction of his neighbor’s house. Living at the furthest end of Vulture Peak Drive, somewhat higher than the Jacksons’ residence, meant that when he’d first moved in he had become quite familiar with the Jacksons, from a distance, some weeks before they had actually met. Tom, tall, broad-shouldered and ramrod straight carried an air of invincibility about him, looking every inch the recently retired, high-ranking military man. Tina, trim, vivacious and plucky, was always on the go. When she wasn’t creating extravagant floral arrangements for weddings, baptisms or other milestones in the community, she was tending to her plants. In particular, she took great joy from the gorgeous salvia blossoms that flourished in the hanging baskets which ranged along the full length of their balcony.

The Jacksons were the kind of people whom other friends from the forces constantly dropped in to see. Their home was Party Central. During those early years there had seldom been a weekend night when their balcony—overlooking the same panoramic vista as Lama Tashi’s modest porch—wasn’t filled with former comrades and their spouses, with much back-thumping, shoulder-pounding conviviality among the men.

Unflagging entertainment along the mountain didn’t disrupt the lama’s routine. The occasional few stray bars of music, or laughter that carried on the night breeze was never enough to keep him from sleeping—he was usually in bed by 9 pm. And when he woke for his first meditation session of the day at 3 am, surveying the pristine tranquility of the moonlit valley, it was as if he was the only person in the world.

Over the decades, the socializing next door had fallen away, Tom had begun to stoop and Tina slowed down. There was no escaping the aging process, not that ageing alone accounted for the changes that had come over Tom—and, as a consequence, Tina. There was a more troubling reason why the former Colonel would spend so many solitary hours on the balcony staring into the night, a tumbler of bourbon beside him.

Something he had been able to rationalize, suppress, or ignore through most of his working life was taking advantage of the stillness of his retirement to emerge from its basement trunk and slide into waking consciousness. Something that had only ever revealed itself before in his worst nightmares would creep out at unexpected moments—and once glimpsed, devour all of his attention. Horrific, sickening, misery-inducing, it was something he found hard enough to admit to himself let alone anyone else.

Lama Tashi had seen it clearly the very first time they’d met. That occasion had been a couple of months after his arrival, wheeling his trash can to the end of the road for the weekly collection. Tom had just transported the Jackson’s own can on the back of a macho-looking pick-up truck. Turning to find his new neighbor approaching, he had instinctively assumed his unassailable, military man pose.

When Lama Tashi met Tom’s clear blue eyes, he immediately saw what was in his heart—and his expression was filled with compassion.

Abashed, Tom hadn’t known how to respond. Never had he found himself so completely transparent, especially with regards to that worst of all horrors. He was so successful at hiding it, he doubted that anyone even suspected it was there. Now, caught unawares by a man of self-evident virtue, he didn’t know how to react. He certainly wasn’t prepared for the rush of benevolence from Lama Tashi’s heart, which made him feel both awkwardly self-conscious and utterly unworthy. So he had retreated behind a veil of elaborate courtesy, insisting on giving Lama Tashi a ride back to his house, talking all the way about the city’s garbage collection policy.

From the next week on, Tom always stopped by to collect his neighbor’s trash can and return it to him, once emptied, later in the day. After the worst winter snowfalls, he’d clear away the snow on Vulture Peak Drive, not only to his own front door, but to the lama’s too.

Had he been asked to explain himself, Tom would have drawn himself up and spoken about the importance of being a good neighbor. But it went very much deeper than that. Once, when repairing his own stone fence Tom had, without prompting, spent a week repairing Lama Tashi’s. And when the lama had gone on a two month visit to the Himalayas, to reconnect with his elderly guru, his colleagues and family, he had returned to find his cabin newly and securely insulated, protecting him from the worst of the arctic winter freeze as well as the summer heat.

Lama Tashi always expressed his heartfelt appreciation for his neighbor’s kindness, although both he and Tom knew that it wasn’t his gratitude that Tom yearned for. It was instead something he had so far been unable to bring himself to express.

Lama Tashi had tried to reach out to him over the months, then years. There had been exchanges when he’d as good as physically yanked Tom away from the mesmerizing specter. The irony didn’t escape the lama that it was the man who lived closest to him, who did more than most in practical ways to support him, and who was in the direst need of his guidance, who was also the most impervious to his efforts.

Enough! Understanding the unprecedented, seismic shift about to occur, Lama Tashi knew that Tom was about to have the best chance he ever would to be rid of the monster that was slowly crushing the life out of him. Past encouragement had failed. Time to change tack.

Lama Tashi knocked three times on the Jackson’s front door. It was a while before the lock turned and Tom was standing in the doorway. Once again, there was the same meeting of eyes. The same recognition in Lama Tashi’s expression as he reflected, with deep concern, how pervasive the darkness in Tom had become.

Tom showed him through the hallway, a light-filled room with a high, windowed ceiling, in the center of which stood a large table. In former times the table would have been dominated by one of Tina’s sweeping floral arrangements, a festival of vibrant blossoms and verdant greenery. Today, it stood bare, a great, empty, highly-polished slab. Tom led him to the lounge which opened onto the balcony, the room which had once been the epicenter of the Jackson’s social whirl. Its walls were bedecked with photographs of battleships, striker aircraft and, mounted in pride of place, a pair of Enfield muskets from the Civil War. In a far corner stood an upright piano, never played. The balcony outside was open and strangely stark, denuded of the once-lush hanging gardens of Babylon, as Tom had ironically referred to his wife’s creations.

“I’ve come to ask if you would do me a favor,” began Lama Tashi, once they were sitting. “I may be needed elsewhere from tomorrow, for a few days. I wonder if you could please visit the cabin, and if I’m not there, feed Shanti?”

Tom nodded. “Of course.”

For a few minutes they discussed details of timing, where Shanti’s food was stored, and her preference for variety. Her water, and the means by which she came and went from the cabin. Then talk turned to general chit chat about the early warmth of spring this year and its effect on the black bears who were coming out of hibernation earlier than usual.

The small talk ran its course. There was an awkward silence. It was now or never.

Lama Tashi turned, gazing toward the balcony where Tom sat alone, night after night. “I see you in the evenings,” he said.

Tom followed his eyes as if joining him to study the diminished version of himself, slumped in his chair.

“I like a bourbon,” he observed, tilting his head in the direction of his bar in the corner of the room, showcasing a row of spirit bottles lined up in regimental precision against a mirrored wall.

Lama Tashi surveyed the many bottles. “Alcohol,” he nodded, sagely. “Sometimes, I think, the effect is like meditating.”

Tom’s eyebrows twitched sharply upwards. “How d’you get that?”

“It doesn’t change a thing,” he explained. “But it may change the way you feel about a thing. Temporarily.”

Tom knew exactly what Lama Tashi was up to, trying again to lever open that particular door. He made no reply, looking instead at the floor with an avoidance that had become reflexive.

“It helps you sleep, yes?” the lama attempted.

Tom didn’t say anything for a long while before grunting, “Anesthetic.”

Lama Tashi nodded. “Pain relief.”

“You’re probably going to tell me I should meditate instead,” Tom flashed a look of open defiance. “But sitting still for hours isn’t my bag. I’m a man of action.”

They were on the same page now. The subject of Tom’s pain acknowledged along with his recalcitrance. And only because of his heartfelt compassion, Lama Tashi did the last thing Tom expected. While Tom studied him through blue eyes so light they were almost vacant of color, Lama Tashi reflected back an altogether different reality.

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