Instructions From My Purrfect Teachers

I consider myself a Buddhist and a long-term meditation practitioner. But I would not call myself a good meditator. Perhaps I compare myself to the great teachers I have been privileged to know. I have sat with Mahayana teachers in Nepal and India, and I have sat within the gold-covered Theravadan temples of Thailand. I observe my teachers who seem filled with equanimity, serenity, and a calm joy. In myself, as I sit, I experience restlessness, grumpiness, and monkey-mind.

I have read hundreds of books on meditation, but reading leads me to thinking, and thinking does not lead me to meditation. Thinking only leads me to more thinking!

I have done week-long silent retreats during which I have been aware only of my own internal dialogue, which sounds like this: “How did the Buddha do it? How does the Dalai Lama do it? How does anyone find peace in sitting? Why do I continue to sit minute after minute, hour after hour, year after year? When is Lunch?”

After practicing Zen walking meditation, I recognize that I meditate more easily when I am in motion. Being walked by my dog is a moving meditation. (instructions to follow). Even with this realization, I yearn to experience what I perceive as I contemplate the image of the Buddha on my altar, sitting peacefully in meditation. Why can’t my practice be more peaceful, like that?

And then, my cat jumps up on to the altar and sits down next to the Buddha. She swishes her tail and issues a silent dare to follow her instructions, down to the last whisker. I have tried everything else, so why not follow the enlightened direction of the most venerable Feline Shimi Lama Rimpoche?

“Trying to understand the true nature of mind is like trying to catch frogs. You must sit patiently and observe frog nature, jumping here and there. Frogs jump in a random fashion. They follow no order. So are your thoughts like a little green frog. Jumping, jumping, planning, worrying, fantasizing, grocery shopping, thinking of lost shoes and keys, the bank and meetings. Your thoughts are like little frogs (but not as cute.) In truth the goal is not to eat the frogs. I catch them and bring them live, as offerings of living green jewels, and leave them on your doorstep. When you see the frogs you leave your mind at the desk for a moment. You offer gratitude and, praise me and tenderly pick them up and release them in the lagoon. My goal is the moment when you see the frog and your mind stops jumping. Your heart opens in compassion and you experience your own liberation as you watch the frog swim away.” So ends the beginning Mind Stopping Frog Liberation teachings of Shimi Lama Rimpoche.

I go to a regular Sunday morning meditation group with a classically-trained Tibetan lama. We sit in a shrine room that feels as if it were transported directly from Tibet, surrounded by Buddhist scripture and art. I chant in Tibetan and feel myself entering the stream of meditation practitioners who have lived since the time of the Buddha.

The lama’s white cat Tashi weaves in and out between the sitting meditators, coming up to each one of us and purring. I feel that he is the embodiment of some great teacher, come to direct me into a more complete practice. After he has made the rounds of everyone in the room, he goes up and sits on the lama’s lap, After meditation, I ask the lama about the presence of his cat. He says “Tashi recognizes and feels all the love and compassion in the room.”

I feel the presence of Tashi guiding me to greater compassion. Then I come home to my own cat and experience her as an extraordinary teacher. I have spent long hours sitting and observing my cat. I find that she guides me into the nature of my true mind and being, and she points me to the Buddha nature in all things.

I feel that all beings can be teachers, regardless of species. I am striving and grasping for the ideal meditation practice. I have sought out teachers from all traditions. Yet for me, two of my greatest teachers have been the ones wearing furry cats and dog suits, not yellow robes.

Walking Meditation with Pema Luna

- Jack Kornfield

Oh Beloveds, perk your ears and listen to this most generous wisdom.

We all know that sitting meditation is hard, hard, hard and requires much discipline, even with the promise of treats. Consider sitting meditation as the worthy goal of much diligent practice for advanced practioners.

Consider starting with walking meditation. The puppy walk is a beautiful practice. Walking meditations are the accessible and innate practice of all puppies. Every puppy practices walking meditation with full attention.

O owners of young puppies, give yourself wholeheartedly to the practice of walking meditation and it will bear the good fruits of physical health and awareness. See the world through puppy eyes and you will develop the greatest meditation skills. Imagine each blade of grass, each leaf and each rock being fully new to the puppy mind.

To practice puppy awareness during walking meditation opens the senses of smell, and vision. Yesterday’s walk is history. Tomorrow’s walk is unimaginable. Today the walk unfolds with newness in every moment.

Stop when the puppy stops and look at what the puppy looks at. You who are always in your head, you who are planning a class or writing a paper in you mind, can discover the astounding power of this moment. The puppy stops and tilts its head. Follow its upward gaze and you may see the hawk circling against a soft cloud. Follow the puppy gaze down and you may discover a shy salamander after the rain. Your eyes may be nourished by a blossom’s purple petals strewn across bright green grass.

Puppies are not walking to get from here to work, although they may be walking to “do their business.” Walking meditation as taught by puppies everywhere has no other agenda. In this way one foot follows the other. We breathe naturally and the senses are delighted. Weight loss, strengthening of the heart, and renewed energy are helpful by-products of the experience.

You must walk with the master several times each day. Every walking meditation is an opportunity for awakening the body, mind and spirit.

Now offer a prayer of gratitude for the teaching of puppy wisdom. All praise and thanks to the four-legged beloved!

Death of the Guru

Three weeks before this teaching from my teacher I had to put my cat of 14 years to sleep. She had been my companion through illness, through trans-continental moves, and through love and love lost. She was the great constant in my life.

For 13 years her health was impeccable, so I was unprepared to face the day when she had her first kitty stoke and became slightly paralyzed. Months went by and her physical health deteriorated. I could not bear the thought of living without her. For many of us who are single, our pets are not pets. They are our significant others. Many of us have longer relationships and healthier relationships with our pets than we do with spouses or lovers.

How then to face such a loss? For weeks my mind spiraled around itself with sorrow and frustration. Eventually she couldn’t make it to the cat litter box, and she wasn’t eating. Finally I awoke one morning knowing that I had to release her.

My best friend came and sat with me as I held my cat through the afternoon. Just three months prior to this day we had held his sister through her death. I sat in a twelve-hour vigil through the night meditating on the passage of his sister. Sitting with her body, I questioned the nature of life and death and reality, finally releasing her ashes into the sea during a memorial service.

The full scope of the nature of attachment is profound. Sometimes I can even recognize that although I am suffering, I am not yet willing to release the object of my attachment. The afternoon I knew would be my cat’s last afternoon, we sat together matching breath to breath. I held her in my arms and did not want to let her go. She was my beloved teacher, my Guru.

At the vet’s, she was so peaceful and I was in so much pain. She went to sleep in my arms, curved herself into a small ball, and was gone. On the way home I cried and wished I had taken one of her whiskers with me. I found a small piece of her fur and put it in a heart-shaped box. The next day I spoke about my grief with two women friends, my peers, both of them animal lovers, and both single women.

We all talked about how much we loved out pets. Then they said “Life is too short to live in grief. Can you hold the grief and allow more love in the same time? We are born for loving.” So that very afternoon one of my friends drove me to the animal shelter, and there I met my next guru. She weighed three and a half pounds and had a cold and runny eyes, but the instant I saw her I recognized my teacher. I named her Shimi Lama. Shimi-Lama is Tibetan for “beloved teacher cat."

Within minutes of bringing her home, I could feel the power of her lessons. She brought me to an awareness of the pain and sorrow and loss of my friend, my teacher, of many years. Simultaneously, I became aware that moment by moment I could experience the loss and then feel delight in the very next moment. Grief and love fell as close together as paired heartbeats.

Shimi teaches me to stay present with the reality of experience in the moment. She reminds me gently that without awareness in small and large ways, I could spend my life chasing my own tale, instead of the sublime recognition of knowing all I am attached to is part of me, not all of me, and I can shift my focus from loss to love if I am willing.

Along with feeling grief for my beloved Guru Fou, I chose to feel the love of my new kitten. The awareness that came to me was that I could feel the grief and the love almost simultaneously. The moment of ceasing to chase my own tail came when I realized that I did not have to feel guilty for abandoning the love of my old friend who had died and embracing the love of a new friend, a living new four-legged teacher.