A Christmas tale for all spiritual traditions

By the Dalai Lama's Cat

Dear Readers,

As Christmas approaches, I’d like to offer a gift to enjoy when you find a contemplative moment, accompanied perhaps by a coffee and a nourishing slice of panettone - Mrs. Trinci would insist on it!

Wishing you a beautifully peaceful and uplifting festive season.

David

---

From the Dalai Lama’s Cat …

Winter can be a bleak time, not so? What are we to do when the days become so short and the world so remorselessly dark and frozen? When puddles turn to ice overnight and no joy is to be found in the sun’s rays? We can only withdraw from the outside world. Find the cosiest spot we are able. And, with the utmost of patience, settle.

True, humans have all manner of inventive ways to keep warm and mentally stimulated. But during these longest nights of wintertime everything about nature seems to be telling sentient beings the same thing. Delivering a message of unmistakable clarity: go within!

What, dear reader, if I was to invite you during this bleak midwinter, on a visit to a most extraordinary source of warmth? To join me on my own personal highlight of the season? An encounter you won’t find on any official calendars of the Dalai Lama, but that, while deeply personal for him, holds the most exquisite promise for us all?

You would like to come? Wonderful! While we wait for the car to arrive – don’t worry, it will only be a short ride – there’s something you need to know.

---

It was Ludwig who started it. The tanned, silver-maned owner of The Downward Dog School of Yoga had struck up a friendship with the Dalai Lama when they were both new arrivals to Dharamshala. On their first December in India, he discovered that His Holiness had little experience of a Western Christmas, and soon told him that all the best parts of festive celebrations were of German origin.

The Tannenbaum, Christmas Tree, to be decorated with lights and ornaments. St Nicholas Day, where children put out their shoes to be filled with candies and small gifts. Gingerbread Houses, to be decorated and enjoyed during the Christmas festival. Ludwig had spoken with Teutonic pride about how these traditions had been taken and adapted by the whole world. The Dalai Lama had listened with such rapt interest that a few days later, an invitation arrived. The first in what was to become a special, annual custom.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s the sound of His Holiness’s car pulling up at the entrance. It’s the shortest day of the year, is it not, just before 11 am? Yes, bodyguards are appearing, and the Dalai Lama is rising from his desk. The driver himself – the one who bestowed on me the unfortunate nickname Moussie-Tung, but let’s not go into that – is collecting me up in a fleece blanket and taking me downstairs.

Quick sticks, dear reader! This is no time for dilly-dallying. And no, we aren’t going to the vet. It that were the case, I’d be incarcerated in the dreaded cat carrier. But instead, as you can see, I’m being placed with the utmost tenderness on the back seat right next to His Holiness, the door clunking shut behind. Ludwig always invites me specifically. He has a discerning empathy, you see, when it comes to cats.

---

And so we roll across Namgyal Courtyard, which I normally survey from the upstairs windowsill. We turn left at the gates and it’s only a short journey out of town into the mountains and along a narrow forest road. The driver must go much more slowly along here, pine needles and powdered snow crunching softly beneath the tyres as we bend and wind through the forest.  Until we arrive at a log cabin in a clearing.

Ludwig’s home is a modest, rectangular building, windows glowing with warmth. A Christmas wreath – another German invention – decorates the entrance. And from the chimney rises a steady plume of smoke.

Ludwig is opening the door as we approach, welcoming His Holiness. The driver, with me in his arms, slips in behind, crossing the room to place me in the very best spot – before the stone fireplace, where the red embers of a log fire glow enticingly.

As Ludwig well knew when he invited me, few things are more alluring to a cat than a toasty hearth on a glacial winter’s day. On my first annual visit I had immediately settled on a woollen rug and began grooming myself, before stretching out to capture the full heat of it on my stomach. A real fire! We don’t have such things at Namgyal given the hazard they present. But there is something quite mesmerising about the soft crackle of burning embers. The flicker of flames. The faint aroma of pine smoke. I didn’t want to miss out on it even for a moment!

---

More familiar with the annual ritual, I am in less of a hurry today. And of course you must come inside – you’ll catch the death of cold if you stay out there any longer. Just make sure you scrape the snow off your shoes!

The woman in the brown tunic who the Dalai Lama is greeting as his much-loved friend, is Sister Teresa, a nun from the nearby Carmelite Monastery. She has the most exquisitely gentle presence, does she not? An expression in her eyes of the warmest acceptance. And she possesses the softest of spots for a fluffy cat, which is why she can’t resist scooping me up in her arms to nurse me as she talks. There is no cat at the monastery, you see. As I know from previous visits, I am her annual feline fix.

When Ludwig had first invited His Holiness to his home to see what a properly decorated Tannenbaum Tree should look like, and how a Christmas cake really ought to taste, he had also invited Sister Teresa, a childhood friend. He hoped she could answer any questions the Dalai Lama might have about spiritual aspects of Christmas. And as a Christian contemplative, might there be something in their meditative experiences that resonated?

Ludwig’s intuition on this too had been flawless. Not only had the lama and the nun greatly enjoyed Ludwig’s festive offerings and discovering how much their spiritual traditions had in common. There had been another, quite unexpected connection. In separate ‘thank you’ messages to Ludwig afterwards, both Sister Teresa and His Holiness noted how greatly they appreciated simply being in each other’s presence. Should they ever meet again, each expressed the wish that they may share a meditation.  

Standing beside Sister Teresa, the woman greeting the Dalai Lama in the plain, white robes is Maharishi Devi, a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation. Peace floods out from her, does it not? Her eyes convey a tranquillity so deep you feel touched by them, as if all it takes from her is a glance and, in some unfathomable way, you feel calmness pouring in.

Those noises outside? Sounds like another car. Ludwig has gone to the door again. Silhouetted against the snowscape comes the large, black-clad form of Ezra Chaim Kabbali, helping the elderly Rumi Al-Faqr through the whiteness. The two of them could not look more different. Ezra, large and stout with his great, Rabbinical beard blowing in the wind. Rumi is a wisp of a man with a sallow face, in green robes with a russet turban about his head. And yet, when together, the two of them are strangely complementary, yin and yang.

---

It isn’t long before they are inside and everyone settles. This is a long-awaited and much-valued annual event. And while it may have started based on external trappings, it has long since moved on. None of the contemplatives is interested in small talk or festivities. Their focus is on what’s happening as they take their places on meditation cushions arranged in a semi-circle in Ludwig’s sitting room.

Opposite where I sit in front of the fire, is the Dalai Lama. Closest to me at his right is Ezra, then Sister Teresa. To his immediate left is Maharishi Devi, then Rumi. Ludwig occupies a cushion a short distance behind Sister Terea, and you’d better join in too, dear reader. Take a seat on a cushion as part of our group, or on a chair – it doesn’t much matter where. As you’ll find out for yourself, when a Kabbalah mystic and a Sufi master, a Carmelite contemplative and a Maharishi merge their focus with that of the Dalai Lama, wherever in the room you sit you cannot possibly be untouched. These are all people who know how to let go of whatever narrow, tightly-held view of themselves they may have once had, and who have trained, instead, to focus on a state of boundlessness indescribably more transcendent and powerful.  

Ezra Chaim Kabbali has explained, in previous years, the notion of Ein Sof, meaning ‘no limits,’ the formless infinity of divine nature before any creation emerged. How it is the goal of Jewish mystics to cling to this state beyond words, this nameless being, whether in meditation or going about everyday life.

Sister Teresa has spoken of gnosis, a feminine Greek noun for self-awareness, something only possible when we let go of all conceptions of ourselves and instead experience the divine within. The Kingdom of Heaven, she has explained, is not so much a place so much as a state of consciousness. It is present in each one of us, but we must free ourselves of our illusions if we wish to experience it.

Maharishi Devi, like the Dalai Lama, has described her purpose in non-theistic terms. The key to transformation, she has said, is to realise deeply that this moment is all we ever have. Time is not a river that constantly flows by, but an illusion. And thought is born of time. By dwelling in the present, we loosen the grip of time and thought – there is only direct perception of the here and now.

As for Rumi Al-Faqr, he is a mystic of the fewest words. “Die before you die, and you never shall die,” is one of the simple phrases he consistently utters. Freeing ourselves of the ego, the self, is necessary if we wish to discover our true nature.

---

The Dalai Lama is raising his palms to his face and whispering a homage under his breath. Sister Teresa and Maharishi Devi do likewise, the other two men murmuring a soundless invocation. Within a short while they are settling on their cushions, eyes closed in some cases or in others, like His Holiness, slightly open and gazing unfocused.

How would you describe the whisker-tingling effect of sitting here with these meditators, dear reader? I can see from your expression that you feel something. An awakening to a subtle but quite tangible shift in the atmosphere. It is like finding yourself in a room with a choir of five people who begin, sonorously and simultaneously, to sing five different notes. The effect is powerful but not, initially, harmonious. Or finding yourself in an engine room among five turbines when the starter switch is flicked. There is a sudden rush of power. The effect is quite giddying.

But within a short while the tones naturally modulate. One of the bass notes may creep up half a tone, or a soprano voice dip down. The accommodation is self-organising. What continues is no longer the sound of five individual voices, but a harmony as profound in depth as it is wide and soaring in breadth. Exquisitely coherent and multi-dimensional there is also a rapidly-growing power. Like the spinning turbines, once perfectly synchronized, the collective impact of five master meditators feels altogether greater than the sum of their individual parts. So great that it can’t possibly be contained within only one room.

---

As I sprawl by the hearth, enjoying maximum exposure of warmth to tummy, along with the most-welcome novelty of the fire I relish being absorbed in the irresistible force of attention. Of focus. A cat’s mind, like a human’s, may very well skip from one subject to another. But here in this room - and I expect you are feeling this too – it becomes effortless to let go of thought. To be caught up in a flowing dynamic that is at once beyond all form of concept and, at the same time, blissfully peaceful.

How many times we hear meditators talk about their struggle to concentrate. To hold their attention to just one thing – be it their breath, a mantra or a visualisation. Yet here, like some miracle, it is effortless. The force surging from this cabin in the forest may be invisible, but it is one of coherence. A prana, an energy that knows no limits and rushes out, north, south, east and west to any being open to sensing it. Drawing all away from inner chatter where we make up the world and ourselves. Reminding us of the deeper truth of our primordial nature, our Ein Sof, our Kingdom of Heaven. In letting go of ourselves, we experience a luminosity so sublime that it can’t possibly be named. One that is beyond words.

Is it true, as I’ve heard some say, that it is only the benevolent prana of contemplatives gathered together that has prevented humans from destroying themselves already? Whether in Himalayan gompas or European monasteries, Indian ashrams or African shrines, American abbeys or desert Khanqahs, these are the spiritual powerhouses of the planet. They generate and transmit a metaphysical balm that protects people from their own worst instincts. They offer an underlying, omnipresent reminder that beneath the world of appearances is an ultimate reality that is ours to experience. And through our hearts and minds we have the choice to move closer to it. Or further away.

---

What happens when we reach out to it? Or, as Rumi Al-Faqr may well ask, when it reaches out to us?  Perhaps you can feel it for yourself, dear reader? Because there is a moment you may notice only after it has happened that a shift that occurs. The feeling of rapture is still there, but in a more refined state. It feels like a clarification of some kind. An ascension. Exactly the same transcendent feeling but even more impeccable and exalted. A lightness so delicate it seems to pervade, to co-exist with everything, making whatever you see and hear illusion-like. Rendering all divine. There is nowhere more beautiful, more immaculate than this. No state more healing.

And no matter how long the meditation lasts, when the Dalai Lama leans forward, picks up the mallet and strikes the rim of the Tibetan singing bowl placed before him, we attend to the fading sound of the chime with mixed feelings. There is a time of adjustment, of return. Eyes meet, and warm expressions are shared. No words can be found to adequately express what has just happened. None are needed.

---

After a silence, Sister Teresa is reaching into her robes for a page which she unfolds, before putting on a pair of reading glasses. “I would like to offer today’s first gift,” she says.

His Holiness glances, encouragingly.

“A poem by Ann Lewin,” she says. Before quoting:

“‘You do not have to look for anything,

Just look.

You do not have to listen for

Specific sounds,

Just listen.

You do not have to accomplish anything,

Just be.

And in the looking

And in the listening

And the being,

Find

Me.’”

The others show their appreciation, Ezra chuckles as he produces a small notebook from his own pocket. "In every spark of existence, the flame of the infinite burns,” he glances towards Sister Teresa. “The divine light is woven into the fabric of all creation, and every element whispers the presence of the Ein Sof."

His Holiness smiles approvingly. Now it is the turn of Maharishi Devi to unfold a paper tucked into her robe. “This comes from a letter written by Albert Einstein in March 1955, just a few weeks before he died at the age of 76. It was a letter of condolence to the family of a friend, Michele Besso, who had just passed away. The letter ends with a sentence which has become quite well-known. ‘Now he again preceded me a little in parting from this strange world. This has no importance. For people like us who believe in physics, the separation between past, present and future has only the importance of an admittedly tenacious illusion.’”

“Only the eternal present?” confirms the Dalai Lama.

Maharishi Devi agrees.

Rumi Al-Faqr isn’t reaching into his robe, but he is clearing his throat, his pale, green eyes animating his face with a vital energy that belies his frail form. “From Attar,” he says. “‘The drop that has tasted the sea is not afraid of the rain.’”

This insight is greeted, knowingly. Then they are looking at the Dalai Lama who tells them that his gift comes from Tilopa, the renowned 10^th century Buddhist lama. He quotes it by heart:

“The mind’s original nature is like space;

It pervades and embraces all things under the sun.

Be still and stay relaxed in genuine ease,

Be quiet and let sound reverberate as an echo,

Keep your mind silent and watch the ending of all worlds.”

---

Gifts exchanged, they are rising up from their cushions – time to get up, dear reader, and if you don’t mind, please serve everyone a slice of cake. Ludwig is already brewing tea, and you might as well make yourself useful. After a meditation session like the one we have just experienced, and the gifts of insights offered, there is a delightful feeling of connection which everyone here wants to continue for as long as possible.

While refreshments are served, the visitors stand in a tightly-knit semi-circle near the fire, warming themselves as they gaze down at my resplendent fluffiness.

“‘Find me,” the Dalai Lama fixes his benevolent gaze on Sister Teresa as he quotes the last lines of her poem. “This is the true meaning of Christmas, yes?”

She considers the question for a while before saying. “I think so.” Contemplatives, I have discovered, are the most tenuous and least dogmatic of beings. In spiritual matters, the more mature the practitioner, the more relaxed with apparent contradiction and ambiguity. “And I have always been struck by the timing of Christmas,” she continues. “The 25^th of December. No one knows the actual date of Jesus’s birth. But this traditional time we celebrate it, mid-winter, has always been a period of withdrawing from the outside world that fixates us for so much of the year.”

Maharishi Devi was nodding. “Slowing down. Being present.”

“Letting go completely of all you believe to be real, including your very self?” contributes Rumi Al-Faqr.

“Which is necessary if we wish to find the divine within,” adds Ezra Chaim Kabbali.

“And outside,” proposes His Holiness.

“Exactly,” agrees Sister Teresa, as if she might have chosen their very words herself. “This, I think, is the true meaning of Christmas. If we wish to experience our own divine nature, if we wish to be born again, we must first let go of all the old ideas we had about ourselves. It’s a dying away that may seem bleak as winter. But if we allow it to happen, what we find …”

---

She doesn’t need to continue. Besides there are no words for it. But there is, perhaps, a sound. One which I provide with my most munificent endorsement. The sound of one cat purring. Not as some Zen koan, but as a reality in the here and now. A turbine of only one, a sole, mellifluous feline throat, it is my offering to these human embodiments of transcendence, and indeed to you, dear reader.

In this precious moment by the hearth of Ludwig’s cabin, surrounded by the compassionate wisdom of enlightened beings, close your eyes and allow yourself also to be enveloped by loving kindness, by the peace that passes all understanding, by the Ein Sof, abiding in the boundless radiance of the eternal present.

---

With heartfelt thanks to the amazing Pamela Barit Nolan for her encouragement and her kind recommendation of the poem by Ann Lewin.

---

This post is a Christmas gift. Feel free to share it.

---

You can subscribe to my Substack as a free or paying reader.

About half the money you help me raise through your subscription goes to the following four charities. Feel free to click on the underlined links to read more about them:

Wild is Life - home to endangered wildlife and the Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery; Twala Trust Animal Sanctuary - supporting indigenous animals as well as pets in extremely disadvantaged communities; Dongyu Gyatsal Ling Nunnery - supporting Buddhist nuns from the Himalaya regions; Gaden Relief - supporting Buddhist communities in Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal and India.

For a free subscription, press the button below and choose the last column on the right.

---

Christmas story comments

For something different, please sign off with your first name, city/state and country to give us all a sense of whether each one of us is more Himalayan gompa, American abbey or European monastery!

David, Perth, Australia