Creating something that matters
Welcome New Readers
Dear Visitor,
This is David Michie here, author of The Dalai Lama’s Cat series, as well as other fiction and non-fiction Dharma books.
Thank you for clicking through!
As you may know, Substack is a digital platform for writers. I started weekly posts a year ago with two clear objectives. The first is to share the wisdom and insights I have learned from my lamas, in posts that are accessible, enjoyable and uplifting. The second, with the help of readers who are able to pay a modest subscription fee, to raise funds for two Dharma charities in the Himalayas and two animal rescue charities in my home country of Zimbabwe.
In our first year, we have donated $25,000 to support nuns and monks in the Himalaya region and Mongolia; contributed to a successful ‘world first’ surgery, enabling a baby elephant with a broken leg to both survive and thrive; and helped dozens of other orphaned elephants, endangered African animals and hundreds of dogs living in the most impoverished communities in Zimbabwe by providing food and veterinary care.
Please consider taking out a free subscription, entitling you to the short stories and articles I post publicly about once a month. That will give you a feel for the work I do, the causes we support, and the wonderful, global community we are creating.
In time, I hope you may feel motivated to become a paying subscriber, and help support many beings - along with receiving a weekly favourite teaching, ‘mouse-size musing,’ contemplation, recommended reading, or other insight to support and inspire you in your practice.
For the moment, by way of a taster, you may like to read a typical ‘mouse-size musing’ from the Dalai Lama’s Cat.
Have you noticed, dear reader, that some people exude a sensation of perpetual and important busyness? Dozing on the top shelf of the magazine rack at The Himalaya Book Café one afternoon, from the first moment that I clapped eyes on the man in the nearby banquette I had the most powerful awareness of high-powered hustle. Forty-something, wearing a dark, tailored jacket, black hair swept perfectly off his forehead, he had a glowing, muscular presence about him, his face dominated by intelligent and mercurial brown eyes.
Having briefly conferred with a co-presenter at the “Mind Management” conference he was evidently to address that evening, as soon as that meeting had ended and he’d seen his colleague off, he was placing video calls on his laptop to his virtual assistant in the Philippines, his manager in London, and his publicity agent in Los Angeles. He was discussing deals, meetings, and future keynote addresses all the time hammering out a volley of emails and messages.
Stretching my front paws before me with a luxuriant quiver, I found this flurry of zealous enterprise quite mesmerising. All the more intriguing since I had no doubt that it would continue wherever the man went next. He was, it seemed, a veritable tornado of industry. Although along with all the busyness I detected something else – a quality I couldn’t at first place.
During the course of his various exchanges, I had picked up a few things about him. His name was Jake and he’d written a book called The Shift Zone, the theme of which was that between work and home, everyone needs a place to offload the problems of their work or home life, to be their best self in the other place. The Shift Zone had resonated with readers and been a runaway best-seller three years ago. It had launched Jake onto the conference circuit, and he’d travelled around the world several times since, speaking at all kinds of events.
The “Mind Management” conference was the reason he had come to Dharamshala - but not the only one. No sooner had he ended his meeting with an audio-visual assistant than Geshe Wangpo appeared at the door of the café. Keeping an eye on the front of the café, Jake stood the moment the lama appeared, waving discreetly towards him.
“I feel so privileged that you agreed to meet me,” said Jake, waiting for the monk to sit, before taking his place on the facing banquette.
And so he should, dear reader! As one of the most renown teachers at Namgyal Monastery, Geshe Wangpo was a much sought-after lama whose time was in great demand. He didn’t spend time with just anyone who turned up in Dharamshala. Which made me wonder: why Jake?
Glancing towards me, Geshe-la blinked slowly – he was fluent not only in Tibetan, English and Sanskrit, but also the language of cats. The two of us shared our mutual appreciation. Then Geshe Wangpo turned to the visitor: “How can I help you?”
Jake looked momentarily startled, having expected a few minutes of conversational chit-chat. But Geshe-la was every bit as focused as he. And even more direct. Forced to abandon whatever he had been planning to say, as the lama held his eyes Jake seemed to be wondering how best to respond. Before realising he should just come out with it.
“I’ll be completely honest with you,” as he began his shoulders slid perceptibly downwards. “I wrote this book which did well a few years ago. I’ve been doing paid talks about it, conferences, writing spin-off articles for magazines - architects’ journals, human resource titles, you name it.”
Geshe-la nodded. In reality, there was little need for Jake to explain anything. The lama could see anyone’s back story as clearly as a drama series recap on TV.
“It was very exciting to begin with. But as book sales slowed, and the really big invitations dried up, I’m having to work harder and harder to earn less and less money.”
Slumping downwards, Jake seemed somehow smaller – and less commanding - than only a few moments earlier.
“I’m on a race to the bottom!”
It was only now that I recognised that other quality, entwined with important busyness, that I’d been unable to place earlier: it was desperation.
“My manager keeps asking me – what’s next Jake? What comes after The Shift Zone?”
I had overheard as much directly but given Jake’s suave demeanour at the time I hadn’t understood it’s significance. “You can only slice, and dice Shift in so many ways for so many audiences,” his manager in London had told him. “And you’ve been great at that. Outstanding! But where’s the next Shift Zone?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.” There was a candour in Jake’s eyes as he met Geshe Wangpo’s. “And I’m hoping that you can help.”
Geshe-la gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Why me?”
“Two reasons.” Hitching himself up, Jake had evidently prepared for this. “First, you have such an extraordinary knowledge of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. And second, you also understand the minds of Westerners. So you know where the gaps are. What we would benefit most from learning.”
“You want me to be the goose that lays the golden egg?” Geshe-la chuckled wryly. “To give you an idea for your next book?”
“I’ll happily do a royalty agreement.”
Geshe Wangpo flicked his right hand dismissively.
For a pause he held Jake’s gaze before leaning forward, placing his elbows on the table between them.
“Even if I could give you a golden egg. A big idea,” he nodded pensively. “What good would that do?”
Jake was flummoxed. “You’d be helping me. Greatly!” he said, after a while. “And anyone who reads the book or understands the concept.”
“Yes, yes,” Geshe-la’s lips curled upside down, as if he’d been expecting a more insightful answer.
Jake remained silent, so the lama prompted him, “In three years, four years from now. That book is finished. You are, once again, on a race to the bottom.” Repeated in his soft Tibetan accent, Jake’s words sounded somehow manic. “Must you come back to McLeod Ganj to see your old friend Geshe Wangpo? To ask him for the next big idea?”
Jake glanced down, disheartened. Geshe-la had steered the conversation in a direction that was neither expected nor helpful. But he couldn’t refute what he had just said.
Geshe Wangpo gave him time to ponder for a while before asking, “What if I showed you a way to find your own big ideas, so you didn’t have to ask anyone?”
The visitor’s gaze shot up to meet his. “I’ve been thinking of little else for the past few years,” his expression was vulnerable. “I’m not sure I’m even capable.”
“You were capable of The Shift Zone,” Geshe Wangpo retorted briskly. He wasn’t letting his visitor off so easily.
Jake shifted awkwardly.
“What if I told you that you’re surrounded by big ideas!” Geshe-la was even more emphatic. “Many of them. All of us,” he gestured with open palms around the café. “We have access to whatever insights, inspiration, guidance we need.”
“Then why can’t I see them?” Jake’s voice rose plaintively.
“You really want to know?” Geshe-la challenged, his tone as calm and measured as Jake’s was the opposite.
The visitor nodded wretchedly, recognising that he was probably about to be offered an insight he didn’t much care for.
“Very well,” said Geshe-la. “The Tibetan word we use can be translated as ‘laziness.’”
“What?” Jake reacted as if stung. Was this some kind of cruel joke at his expense? Whatever failings he might be accused of laziness was certainly not one of them. “How can you even say that?!” he protested. “I never stop working!”
The lama nodded.
“I go through days at a time when all I seem to do is work!”
“Exactly. You cram your life with so much compulsive activity that you can’t see what’s right here.” Tilting his right hand so it was vertical, he made a slicing action through the air in front of his own face. “This is the pandemic of modern times. People live like they are in snow globes which they are constantly shaking, this way and that.”
Jake stared at him, dumbfounded.
“So much frantic going from here to there. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Too much thinking! TV. Radio. Devices stuck to their hands. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hours a day of busy-ness. Not even twenty minutes to allow the mind to settle.”
“You’re saying that just because I can’t see something,” confirmed Jake. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t there?”
“Too much thought pollution,” the lama told him.
“I thought that being active and productive was a good thing,” Jake wasn’t ready to wave the white flag quite so easily.
“If your actions are aligned with your highest purpose,” Geshe Wangpo shrugged. “Then certainly. But how do you know this if you never spend a moment with who you really are, let alone becoming aware of your highest purpose? It is called ‘laziness’ when we fill our days with so many diversions and activities that we never face the big existential questions: who am I? What am I doing here? How tragic to allow a whole, precious human life to go by without ever focusing on what really matters.”
“Are you talking about meditation?”
“That’s part of it. An important part.”
“Some would say,” the visitor challenged. “That sitting around meditating every day is lazy. Or at least, an indulgence. Slacking off.”
“Slacking off from what exactly? Obsessive compulsive thinking? Chasing your own tail? Running in circles through the snowstorm?” Geshe-la was uncompromising. “Meditation, mind training, is the most challenging thing you will ever attempt. Focusing purely on the breath, for example. Or learning how to allow thoughts to arise, abide and pass without engaging with them. It’s when you have optimised your mental state that you are the most coherent and creative. That you see what’s right in front of you. Join the dots. Put yourself in a state when fresh ideas arise.”
Jake was following him intently.
“Tell me, do you train at the gym?” The lama asked, Jake’s strapping physical presence suggesting exactly this.
“At least four times a week.”
“Why?”
“To keep on top of my game.”
“Physically speaking,” observed the other. As Jake concurred, he pressed, “So why do you not believe it’s important to keep on top of your game mentally speaking? Why is training your mind of no value at all? Especially when it’s the mind you are looking to for new ideas? Why do you wish to be a mental couch potato?”
Once again, Jake was staring at him, confounded. Wondering how he could dispute what the monk was saying. Before seeming to collect himself. Why was he arguing with a greatly esteemed lama whose advice he had actively sought out, and who was offering such extraordinary - if unexpected – insights? Insights against which, in any case, there were no arguments. This was Geshe Wangpo’s home turf.
Responding to the shift that had come over his visitor, Geshe Wangpo moved in his seat, signalling that the meeting was coming to an end.
“If you truly believe that it is lazy to meditate,” his eyes were bright with mischief. “Then it’s important that you discover the art of being intelligently lazy! Like this one,” he gestured towards where I was lying on the top shelf. “The Dalai Lama’s cat.”
“Is she really?” Jake looked at me, astonished.
Geshe-la got out from the banquette. “Always enjoys good conditions,” he noted. “And no need for endless activity.”
Padding back up the hill to Namgyal Monastery that afternoon, I reflected on Geshe Wangpo’s words. How easy it was to get caught up in irresistible activity, forever allowing the urgent to become the enemy of the important. To put off the discipline of mind-training when some apparently more immediate demand required attention - like a small ramekin of clotted cream.
I remembered how Serena had found it impossible to fall pregnant when, among other things, she’d been overwhelmed by her spice pack business. Only an intervention by the Dalai Lama himself had brought her to her senses – and a more relaxed state in which she had been able to conceive. Similarly, when Franc had arrived in McLeod Ganj years ago, intent on dressing, acting and affecting the part of the devout Buddhist. It had required an equally challenging take-down by Geshe Wangpo for him to quit his masquerade, let his hair quite literally grow back, and start deliberately cultivating the inner peace from which authentic wisdom quite naturally flowed.
Many months passed, perhaps more than a year, and I was sprawled on the top of the filing cabinet in the Executive Assistants’ office when Geshe Wangpo emerged from a meeting with His Holiness. He was in the corridor, just outside, when Tenzin beckoned him.
“A package arrived for you in today’s post, Geshe-la,” Tenzin had stood and was flicking through a number of envelopes and slim packages before extracting one. “Would you like me to open it?”
Geshe Wangpo nodded.
Tenzin quickly tore open the package and handed him the book it contained.
“‘The Subtle Art of Being Intelligently Lazy,’” Geshe Wangpo read the title. “The new bestseller by Jake Teller. Oh!” He looked up at me laughing. “That one!”
“You met the author?” asked Tenzin.
“He wanted me to help find a subject for his next book,” said Geshe-la. “I told him to be like HHC. She meditates for hours every morning does she not?”
“With His Holiness,” Tenzin confirmed.
“You see,” Geshe Wangpo shrugged at the simplicity of it. “Create the space, and all else follows. What could be more obvious than this?”
Being intelligently lazy, I thought, as I blinked slowly at him. Not a virtue, dear reader, that I would ever put at risk!
The Dalai Lama’s Cat & Other Intrigues
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About me
(On the banks of the Zambezi River)
I was born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Africa, lived in London for ten years and have resided in Perth, Australia since 1998. I always felt a closeneness to animals and when I was young I read every book I could find by Gerald Durrell and James Herriot.
Most of my professional life was spent doing communications work for financial services companies. I began meditating for stress management reasons in my 30s. Without knowing it at the time, this started me on a journey which connected me to Tibetan Buddhism.
As a communicator, I wanted to share my wonder at all the insights I was learning from my teachers. This led to my first book in the genre: Buddhism for Busy People. While promoting it, and subsequent books like Hurry Up and Meditate I found that many people interested in these subjects often don’t read non-fiction in their spare time.
Hence the novels which I so enjoy writing: The Dalai Lama’s Cat series, thrillers like The Magician of Lhasa, and most recently Instant Karma: The day it happened. I believe that fiction is an ideal medium to engage readers’ hearts and imaginations as well as their intellects. What’s more, storytelling is part of a long tradition of spiritual teaching, where inner, subtle process become easier to understand when externalised in metaphors and parables.
Since 2015, I have been returning home to Africa with groups on Mindful Safaris, combining my love of animals, meditation and the extraordinary natural vistas of my homeland, including Victoria Falls.
In circling back to where I started, the fundraising I am able to do through Substack helps contribute to the animal rescue charities back home, as well as the wonderful Buddhist charities in the Himalayas, who make every dollar we give them stretch a very long way.
Supported charities
About 40% of subscriber funds goes to support the following four charities:
Wild is Life - home to the Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery, which rescues and rewilds baby elephants who have been orphaned, often in the most traumatic circumstances.
Twala Trust Animal Sanctuary - supporting indigenous animals as well as free food and vet care to over 600 dogs living in extremely disadvantaged communities.
Dongyu Gyatsal Ling Initiatives - supporting Buddhist nuns in the Himalaya regions, who traditionally receive far less financial help than their monastic brothers.
Gaden Relief - supporting Buddhist communities in need personally known to my lama, Zasep Tulku Rinpoche. Active in India, Nepal, Mongolia and Tibet.
If you’d dearly love to become a paid subscriber but can’t afford to, please email me at: safari@davidmichie.com
Feel free to browse the archive of previous posts here. Those posts without a lock icon are free to everyone.
In particular, if you’d like to see how African elephants respond to chanting of the Green Tara mantra, look here.
Please consider becoming part of our community at The Dalai Lama’s Cat & Other Intrigues.
Together, readers around the world are building something that really matters. I hope you’ll join us in our journey to extraordinary places, outer and inner.
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 beyond suffering.
May all beings abide in peace and equanimity, their minds free from attachment, aversion and free from indifference.
May love, compassion, joy and equanimity pervade the hearts and minds of all limitless beings throughout universal space.