Welcome to my new book!

Fresh inspiration and a special community on Substack

Dear Subscribers,

I’m delighted to be sharing not just one, but two pieces of exciting news with you today.

The first, you will already have noticed, is that I’ve moved my newsletter to Substack – a purpose-built platform for writers. I’m calling my newsletter The Dalai Lama’s Cat & Other Intrigues by David Michie.

The second is that I have written a short, new, non-fiction book, beginning a planned series The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Transformation. This book is called Awakening: An Insider’s Guide and is about meditation. I am sharing the preface in this newsletter.

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About The Dalai Lama’s Cat & Other Intrigues

Substack is a platform specially created for writing, podcasting and sharing video content. As well as being writer-friendly, it also enables paid subscriptions. This means that while all of you will remain as my valued subscribers, continuing to hear from me about once a month, those of who you who choose can subscribe for $7 a month to receive additional content, such as fresh work and chapters of new books you won’t find anywhere else, audio guided meditations to download, recommendations of books and authors who inspire me, meditation tips, favourite music and specially-written stories including those by the Dalai Lama’s Cat.

His Holiness’s Cat will be in touch with you directly in the coming days to tell you more in her inimitable way!

Importantly, I plan giving away as much of the income I receive as possible to four particular charities, two focusing on supporting Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas, who have traditionally been badly underfunded compared to their male counterparts, and two focusing on vulnerable African wildlife.

In all four cases, these are charities whose founders I know, and who my wife and I have already been supporting, in some cases for many years. With the support of paid subscribers, we can jointly do so much more!

I look forward to keeping you updated on where our money goes and how it is helping in a very meaningful way – US dollars stretch far in developing countries. 

The Dalai Lama’s Cat & Other Intrigues is a way that we as a community can share the dharma both online and practically, helping the most vulnerable. For a few dollars a month, it’s a chance to start something together that matters.

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Why subscribe?

A regular flow of inspiration!

Your financial support means that I can write more articles and stories and share more guided meditations and videos.  You will get exclusive access to my new book Awakening: An Insider’s Guide in the coming months. As a paid subscriber you will also get a “backstage pass” to my world - the music I love listening to, the authors who inspire me, new ideas and content before I share this with anyone.

Giving dharma

Some people may choose to receive only my free newsletter. If you decide to become a paid subscriber you will recieve additonal content. You will also be helping me create work intended to inspire personal growth - no matter who receives it. Is there any gift greater?

Part of our community

I hope you’ll be a part of a wider community by commenting on articles and discussions as they come up, interacting with others, and exploring the new avenues of inquiry I open up in my writings. Who knows, one day we may even find ourselves sitting round the campfire together in Africa on one of our Mindful Safaris.

Helping the most vulnerable

You will be supporting dharma and humanitarian projects in Tibet, Mongolia and the Himalaya regions and orphaned and endangered animals in Africa.  In every one of these cases, our dollars go a very long way. I’ll be keeping you in the loop with the difference our combined charitable donations make.

Subscription amount

$7 a month is the amount suggested, but you may offer more if you wish. If, on the other hand, you would dearly love subscribe, but just don’t have the money, write to us at safari@davidmichie.com.  This exercise isn’t about my financial enrichment, but creating a virtuous circle.

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The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Transformation

Shortly before Covid, my lama Zasep Tulku Rinpoche (above) was visiting the Tibetan Buddhist Society here in Perth, Australia, and during this time, we spoke about my writing. To my surprise, he suggested I should write some non-fiction books on specific dharma subjects.

When your lama suggests you should do something, in Tibetan Buddhism you do it! Wondering where to start, I thought I should follow the structure of subjects already well-established in the Lam Rim, the core text of our Gelugpa lineage – to which His Holiness the Dalai Lama belongs. One of the first subjects covered is how to meditate.

This is a book about meditation for people interested in Tibetan Buddhism, rather than as a tool purely to manage stress or anxiety, for example. That said, all those benefits, and many others besides, are experienced in a holistic and profound way when we approach our practice with the most benevolent of all intentions.

Importantly, I’m aiming for books in The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Transformation series to be practice-based. Each book will consist of a Part 1 – explaining the basis for practice, and Part 2 – guided meditations.

One great feature of Substack is that it allows for podcasts as well as articles. So in the coming weeks and months, I will be making available not only chapters from Awakening, but audio downloads of me guiding you through the meditations to help you cultivate your own practice.

If you have ever been curious about engaging in a regular meditation practice, within the Tibetan Buddhism tradition, but for whatever reason have been unable to connect to a teacher or centre, this series would be a good place to begin. Awakening: An Insider’s Guide gives you all you need to get started and more. I will be sharing it in portions with paid subscribers over the coming months.

To whet your appetite, I’d like to share with you below the Preface to the series, The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Transformation.

(For those of you who spotted the resemblance between Rinpoche and Yogi Tarchin in The Dalai Lama’s Cat series - well done! I try to base as much as possible of my stories on real life).

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PREFACE: THE PURPOSE OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM

“Generally all phenomena are mind itself.

Your guru arises from this very mind.

There is nothing other than mind.

Whatever appears is all the nature of mind.”

Maitripa’s teaching to Marpa

If we were asked to choose just one word to summarize the purpose of Tibetan Buddhism, that word would probably be ‘transformation.’ Transformation of what exactly? Of the way we experience reality.

Twelve hundred years ago, the Buddhist sage Shantideva wrote:

          Where would I possibly find enough leather

          With which to cover the surface of the earth?

          Yet wearing leather just on the soles of my feet

           Is equivalent to covering the earth with it.

Sometimes we can’t change reality, but we can change the way we experience it. Life may be difficult, presenting us with a metaphorical obstacle course of sharp stones, muddy patches and thorny ground. If we are wearing sturdy walking shoes we’ll notice the terrain, of course, but won’t be too badly affected by it. If we venture outside barefoot – which sadly, most people unknowingly do - we open ourselves up to a whole world of pain.

Of what does Shantideva’s reality-changing footwear consist?  This will vary from person to person, but the fundamental requirement for us all is mindfulness – in particular, a keen awareness of what arises, abides and passes through our minds. Each of us is unique, with our own conditioning, yearnings, triumphs and heartbreaks. But whatever our individual personalities and circumstances, where we all get fooled is into believing that the world outside us is just as we perceive it. That it has an independent reality nothing to do with us. That as objective observers we are simply taking it all in and making the best of things.

In truth, there is nothing objective about the way we perceive reality. Long before Western neuroscientists explained that what we see and hear is much more an act of projection rather than reception, this process was understood in the East. Which is not to deny that something is going on out there. Only that how it seems to us is utterly subjective.

Even more radical, and foreshadowing quantum science by millennia, is the teaching that whatever is going on can’t be found to have any substance. Every object that exists is ultimately comprised of atoms. Every atom is mostly space. Try searching for the elusive building blocks of material and we can’t point even to sub-atomic particles because they may also be energetic waves.

In the words of Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, “Every man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence.”

Or as Buddha summed it up more pithily, “The objective world rises from the mind itself.”

Awakening to our Buddha nature

The traditional Western path to happiness is an indirect one: change the world outside us, attract relationships, material comforts, and whatever we may deem to be “success” into our lives, and once we possess these, they will yield feelings of inner wellbeing.

In reality, however, these elements are unreliable as causes of happiness. Are residents of the wealthiest post codes in our cities notably much happier than others?  How dependable are romantic, family or, for that matter, platonic relationships as a source of enduring wellbeing? As for the wish to be noticed, approved of, famous, which has become such a fixation of our celebrity-obsessed culture, there seems no end to the attendant miseries of the status game.

From a more far-reaching perspective than the one we are perhaps used to adopting, whatever mundane prizes we win are necessarily limited: the moment we die, we lose them. The external reality in which we have invested so much energy comes to an end. All that scurrying around, sacrifice, compromise and striving and then - boom! Game over. Everything of worldly value we have accumulated soon belongs to someone else. Not much of a return for a lifetime’s efforts!

Buddhism takes a more direct approach. Fulfilment arises in the mind, and if our mind isn’t delivering the goods, it’s time for an upgrade. There are practices enabling us to see for ourselves how we create our own reality.  How that reality may be changed. More importantly, practices that lead the way to a comprehensive paradigm shift in the way we experience who and what we are.

For we are all the possessors of minds that are lucid, boundless and tranquil. It may not seem like that a lot of the time, just as in winter it’s hard to believe that up there, beyond the endless, bleak cloud-cover, the skies are a radiant, dazzling blue. Once we train to let go of the surface agitation which, like clouds, mask the true nature of consciousness, we awaken to an understanding of mind that’s altogether more pristine and panoramic. The more we practice identifying with this mind, rather than the passing parade of thoughts moving through it, the more liberated we become. Liberated from the thoughts that trigger all our negative emotions, our anxiety, our despair. Liberated from the deadweight of that ultimate burden which most of us are unaware that we carry around: the burden of our selves. When we are able to step lightly, rest easily, live freely, we quite naturally become more open and empathetic. We broaden the scope of our horizons - and our hearts.

Best of all, there is not some new mystery we need to learn. Something difficult to manufacture or expensive to acquire. Our greatest treasure is there already, all the time. The only skill we need master is that of relaxing into it.

What if mind at its most subtle level continues after death, as meditation masters who traverse this ground assure us?  And what if the inner changes we have effected also continue? There, surely, is a great return on our investment of time and effort. Or, as in the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, ‘There is no need to enter the after-death state empty-handed.’

“Your mind is not the size of a sesame seed!”

We can, each one of us, do very much better than avoid stepping on thorns or sliding in puddles. Just as we can and should also set our sights a little higher than acquiring short-term baubles of dubious worth.

Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden, my kind and precious teacher, would sometimes curl his index finger into the base of his thumb and hold it up so that only the tiniest speck of light showed through.

“Your mind is not the size of a sesame seed!” he would constantly exhort us, pointing to the tragically diminished view we have of ourselves – bags of bones with fleeing life-spans caught up in mundane concerns. “You have Buddha potential. This lifetime is precious. Don’t waste it.”

The word Buddha means ‘awake’ and what Buddha awoke to was the true nature of consciousness. His most promising message was that we can also awaken to it.

Buddha was once an ordinary fellow, wandering about barefoot stubbing his metaphorical toes just like the rest of us. With applied effort he was able to transform his mind - and therefore, his reality. That transformation can be ours too.

(Grateful acknowledgements for the beautiful lotus images to Alred Shrock - top - Jay Castor - second - on Unsplash)

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