Books & Audio

Prologue

Tenzin Dorje (pronounced Ten-zin Door-jay)

Chapter One

Buddhism for Pet Lovers

Introduction

Partners on our journey through life

How do animals’ minds compare to our own? Do pets have any purpose besides offering us companionship, cute social media photos and, perhaps, the motivation to exercise more regularly? And what happens to animals’ consciousness when they die—does it continue in some way, and if so, how and where?

These are big questions for animal lovers because, for many of us, pets are among our most cherished family members. A constant presence in our homes, they are an important focus of our daily routine, active participants in our lives and silent witnesses to us in our most intimate and vulnerable moments. We share our valuable recreation time with them, our furniture, our belongings. Many of us even sleep in contorted postures so that they can share our beds!

We develop functioning, non-verbal communication with our animal companions covering not only domestic rules and rituals but extending well beyond that to include a wide range of feelings, including playfulness, fear, anger, and love. Over time, many of us bond very deeply with our pets, knowing that we share a mutual understanding and a profound connection on a level beyond words. It’s a connection with a quality we may not feel in relation to any other beings. What happens to our pets really matters.

For a growing number of people, it may matter even more than what happens to their fellow humans. One of the most pronounced demographic trends of the past quarter century has been the rise in single person households, which now comprise an astonishing 30 per cent of homes in the developed world. Missing from human-centric census figures are data for pets. If statistics were available, they may well reveal that, far from living alone, many of these 30 per centers share their lives with dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, fish and other beings who are their de-facto families. Loved ones who must be cared for in old age, sickness and death by humans traversing the same ground, albeit more slowly, themselves.

In this, as in so many important ways, pets can be among our greatest gifts. Because in asking questions about what happens to our animal companions, we are propelled to seek answers about our own futures. In exploring practices that may benefit them, we, ourselves, become the first beneficiaries.

This book is about the inner lives of pets, written from the perspective of Tibetan Buddhism. And because of this unique and extraordinary vintage, it is also about our own inner lives. For just as our pets are thinking, feeling beings with the capacity for transcendence, we are too.

Among my earliest memories is the face of Pandy, a Siamese cat my parents gave my older brother when I was born, to help assuage any feelings of jealousy he might feel towards the new arrival. Pandy was a much-loved companion throughout my childhood and right up till the time I graduated from university; she lived to the grand old age of twenty-one. As well as cats, my parents were keen on corgis, which is how two of these also became my energetic playmates during my school years. I was quite young when I discovered a strong empathy for animals. I can still remember being reduced to tears in the back of the family car when a weekend excursion took us past a herd of cattle trapped in barren fields behind a barbed wire fence, so malnourished that their ribs and spines were clearly visible through their hides: how was it possible people could be so unfeeling that they would allow such a thing to happen, I wondered?

As a child, I was devoted to a white rabbit, a golden hamster, a guinea pig and several mice—though seldom concurrently. A cockatiel was perched on my shoulder through most of my teenage years, by which time Pandy’s hunting instincts had, fortunately, dimmed. Because I grew up in Zimbabwe, school holidays frequently meant a visit to a game reserve, and during one vacation I volunteered at the Lion and Cheetah Park, where my duties ran to bottle-feeding lion cubs and the showering of an orphaned baby elephant.

Doctor Dolittle wasn’t so much my childhood hero, as my role model! Why would anybody not wish to talk to the animals, parlay with the pachyderms or chat to a chimp in chimpanzee? I devoured every book written by Gerald Durrell and James Herriot, and fully intended to become a vet until the age of sixteen, when a short stint observing what went on behind the scenes at our local veterinary clinic made me realise that the clinical requirements of being a vet demanded very different skills from those I possessed. It was only much later that I worked out a way to use my compulsion for writing to be of benefit to those possessing fur, feathers, and fins.

Throughout my rich and diverse encounters with different creatures, it never occurred to me that any of them was fundamentally different from me. On a daily basis, we all sought food, drink and whatever creature comforts were on offer. Just as we did our best to avoid hardships of any kind. We all enjoyed giving and receiving affection. And we also had our quirks and rebellious streaks; in the case of Toto, the cockatiel, at the end of the afternoon he would sometimes remain stubbornly in the highest branches of the cherry tree, so that after all coaxing failed, only a well-aimed tennis ball—softly thrown, of course—would persuade him to fly back down again.

The deaths of my pets were not only the cause of grief but also of unanswered questions. My parents were church-going Presbyterians, and when I asked our kindly minister about the fate of poor Bugs, the first to die, he gave me an answer that was intended to reassure but which didn’t. What I wanted to be told was that Bugs was hopping happily in heaven, cared for by rabbit-loving angels and enjoying shredded lettuce from the bottom tray of celestial tea trolleys—an indulgence she’d been allowed at home. Our reverend’s assertion that we could trust God to take care of all His creatures had a vagueness about it which perplexed me.

It was a perplexity that continued as I grew older and discovered that across Christian traditions there is no consensus about the inner lives of animals. What I found instead was ambiguity and contradiction about even the most basic of facts, such as whether or not animals have souls—a bewildering paradox given that the word ‘animal’ comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having soul, or having breath. Revolting, as a teenager, I used to question why, among the seemingly endless Old Testament litanies of who begat whom, the Good Lord hadn’t thought it useful to devote a chapter or two to outlining the spiritual prospects of the overwhelming majority of our world’s inhabitants.

If not religion, then what about science? What had the greatest thinkers in the Western world to say about this important subject? As it turned out, not very much. For most of its history, the focus of Western science has been on the external, measurable world, with inquiry extending to consciousness only recently. And during the past 200 years, the dominant ideology of science has been materialism—i.e. the view that matter is the only thing that exists. In the words of Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA and Nobel Prize Laureate: ̔‘‘You,’̕ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules . . .’

Not all scientists would agree with these words. Those involved in the field of quantum physics would question whether the workings of the mind can be explained on the basis of classical mechanics. If the matter is also energy, then any explanation that ignores the non-material properties of the body cannot possibly tell the whole story.

In recent years, part of the groundswell towards greener, healthier and more mindful living has been the explosion of research studies, TV programs, and books focusing on animals and our relationships with them. Veterinarians, biologists, and conservationists have been joined by new breeds of animal experts, including behaviorists, communicators and complementary healers. Through their work, we have come to learn that the other species with whom we share our planet possess many of the qualities believed, until recently, to be uniquely human and that some possess powers that we’d consider to be superhuman if they were exercised by people. Pigs have IQ levels similar to chimpanzees, live in complex social communities and display high levels of self-awareness and empathy when witnessing the same emotion in other pigs. Elephants grieve and mourn the death of their family members and demonstrate very high levels of mutual support. Dolphins and other cetaceans can see in 3D. Dogs can be trained to detect dangerous falls in a diabetic’s blood sugar level, can know in advance if someone is about to have an epileptic seizure and can even detect bladder cancer with astounding reliability. Some cats, parrots, horses, and dogs have shown that they can accurately predict when their human companions are on their way home, as well as exhibit other startling examples of telepathy.

Increasingly, we are coming to realize that just because animals don’t communicate like we do, it doesn’t mean they are less sentient. They are thinking, feeling beings with the same capacity as ourselves for empathy and selfishness, rage, and compassion, fear, and altruism. In terms of sensory capacity, many of them possess capabilities well beyond our own.

We are all sentient beings

In my early thirties, I began meditating to help manage stress. I was living in London, working for a public relations agency, an environment that was stimulating but relentless. Within weeks of taking up a meditation practice, I began to experience its benefits in ways which went beyond stress management. Eager to know more about the theory behind the simple, morning ritual, I found myself increasingly drawn to books about Buddhism, having discovered that meditation lay at the heart of this tradition.

One thing led to another and I started attending Buddhist classes. This was when, while no longer looking, I found answers to the questions that I had long since given up on. Here, at last, was an approach to both animal and human consciousness that was straightforward and accorded with my own experience. For the thousands of years that Western scientists had been trying to make sense of external reality, their Eastern peers had been doing the same thing in relation to inner reality, using the very same methods of long-term, forensic observation, rigorous testing of hypotheses, peer review and debate. The end result was a coherent explanation which not only made sense as a theory but could also be used as a practical basis for our own explorations of the mind.

Yes, of course, animals have consciousness, is the Buddhist view. And yes, one mind moment is affected by previous mind moments in a casual way so that, whether we are aware of it or not, on an ongoing basis, we are shaping the way we experience reality. Yes, too, the mind, which may be defined as a continuum of clarity and cognition, is non-material, or energetic in nature, and continues beyond physical death in a subtle form.

Newcomers to Tibetan Buddhism frequently remark on how many of the teachings seem to them to be common sense, which makes for a reassuring foundation. But the teachings go well beyond an acknowledgement of the obvious. Of special interest to animal lovers is the concept of bodhichitta (pron. bode-ee-cheetah) which, more than any other term, distinguishes the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Derived from two Sanskrit words, bodhi, meaning awake or enlightened, and citta, meaning mind or heart, bodhichitta is the mind of enlightenment, and may be defined as the wish to attain enlightenment to be of ultimate benefit to all sentient beings. Based on compassion for the suffering we can see for ourselves among both humans and animals, the central objective of Buddhist practice is to cultivate our bodhichitta motivation until it becomes spontaneous and heartfelt.There is nothing human-centric about bodhichitta. It is explicitly all-inclusive. Even a goal as sweeping as helping every person on the planet attain a state of enlightenment would be flawed: it would fail to recognize that all living beings share the same essential nature. We are all sentient beings.

There is nothing human-centric about bodhichitta. It is explicitly all-inclusive. Even a goal as sweeping as helping every person on the planet attain a state of enlightenment would be flawed: it would fail to recognize that all living beings share the same essential nature. We are all sentient beings.

Partners on our journey through life

The title of this book refers specifically to pets. You may be wondering why I am not writing about Buddhism in relation to all animals?

The guiding principles I outline in Chapter 3 can be applied equally to your beloved animal companion as to a herd of giraffes you may watch moving gracefully into the sunset while on safari. What makes pets different is our connection to them. Of the countless billions of sentient beings on planet earth, the fact that we share our homes with a specific few is, from a Buddhist perspective, no accident. The principal of cause and effect, or karma, suggests that the beings closest to us in this life are those with whom we have a particularly strong connection.

Whatever our belief system, the interactions we have with our pets on an ongoing basis offer far greater scope for mutual engagement than the relatively few moments we may spend in the presence of, say, mountain gorillas in the mists of Central Africa, however precious those moments may be. Our pets are part of our world 24/7. Sometimes we spend more time with them than even our closest friends.

On the surface of things, it may seem that people provide food, shelter and walking services in exchange for affection, and perhaps, in the case of dogs, an element of security. But we don’t have to delve too deep to recognize that our relationship with pets is a lot more complex than this basic trade-off would suggest. What if, as psychologists tell us, our emotional well-being depends on our mindfulness, openness, generosity, resilience, and spontaneity? Do pets not offer us ample opportunity to cultivate these each and every day? Are they not, according to this view, among our most active supporters in providing countless opportunities to enhance our capacity for contentment?

The transformative presence of pets is now widely recognized in retirement homes, where lounges filled with sedentary, disengaged residents come alive with the appearance of a visiting golden retriever or a therapy cat. The simple presence of a pet can offer a lightness and a joy, a sense of connection, and an invitation to be uninhibitedly ourselves in a way that is both unique and priceless.

And from a Buddhist perspective, for those of us who wish to help others find not only mundane contentment but also to realize their ultimate potential, the pets in our lives represent a precious and awesome privilege. As I outline on the following pages, there are a great many practices that provide powerful imprints on our pets’ consciousness. These range from ongoing activities like being mindfully present for them every day and creating positive associations with powerful mantras, to the extraordinary opportunity presented by a pet’s death, when we have the chance to help them navigate through a time of transition for the best possible outcome.

I refer to dogs and cats a lot in this book, reflecting their popularity as pets, and the depth of our experience living closely with them. It’s important to know that exactly the same principles and practices apply to other animals. Mice, hamsters, rats and other rodents are very much a part of our broader, mammalian family. It is striking that the reason why rats are the animal of choice for laboratory testing is precise because their physiological functioning is so similar to our own. Pigs heart valves are routinely transplanted into humans. We are all of the same ilk.

Rabbits and guinea pigs can be affectionate pets. Pot-bellied pigs are adored by their owners. And the very close relationship some people enjoy with horses shows that what matters here is not shape or size but consciousness.

The complexity of birds’ brains is only now beginning to be understood—the old insult could not be more misleading. Our avian friends are certainly as sentient as we are. And while warm bonds of friendship are less frequently reported with fish and reptiles, the mere fact that they possess minds means that we can help them, if perhaps to a lesser extent than those beings with whom we have a more empathetic connection.

Do you need to believe there is some continuation of life after death to find the practices in this book useful? Must you accept karma—the principle that all actions create effects in the minds of those undertaking them, whether human or animal? Do you have to buy into the concept of rebirth or other aspects of Eastern mysticism that you may find, frankly, weird?

No. You don’t have to believe anything. What you do need is an open mind.

The materialist theory that consciousness arises from the brain can no more be proven than the idea that consciousness is shaped by cause and effect can be disproven. If you are new to some of these concepts, they may take a time to get your head around.

One of the most exciting aspects of Tibetan Buddhism is that it is a living tradition. Residing among us, here today, are lamas and spiritual masters such as my own precious teachers, Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden, Venerable Acharya Zasep Tulku Rinpoche and Les Sheehy, who walk the talk. The more you spend time with them and observe their actions, the more self-evident the truth of their teachings becomes. They are, if you like, the living, breathing embodiment of this wisdom tradition. Texts and ancient scriptures are all very well, but what validates them and makes them real for Buddhists is the way we can see them transform the lives of others—as well as our own.

For many of us, pets are among the handful of beings who are our closest companions on our journey through life. We may already greatly value these relationships. What I hope to describe, in the pages that follow, is how they can become of inconceivably greater value. How we can work with the love and joy we already feel in these very special relationships to energize and enrich both our pets’ development as well as our own. How what starts out as the simple wish for the happiness of our beloved pet, when conjoined with bodhichitta, becomes the transcendental cause not only for our pets’ ultimate enlightenment but for ours too.

What happened to Bugs? My biggest regret is that I didn’t know then what I know now, or I could have been of far greater help to her. What I am confident of is that her mind stream continues. Through our close connection there is the prospect that I can be of benefit, and the sooner I evolve in my own journey, the faster I will be of use to her.

Ultimately, we may one day be able to manifest as two beings at a celestial tea trolley, joking about the time that one of us was a rabbit and the other a human being—and perhaps contrast it with the time when it was the other way around.

Or maybe she is with me as I write these words, at this very minute, lying on the end of my desk, now in the guise of my tortoiseshell cat, purring . . .

• Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul, Scribner, New York, 1994, p. 3.
• See: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c#page-8, accessed 10 February 2016.
• Carl Safina, Beyond Words: What animals think and feel, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2015, p. 69.
• Linda Bender, Animal Wisdom: Learning from the spiritual lives of animals, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2014, pp. 28–9.
• Rupert Sheldrake, The Sense of Being Stared At: and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind, Arrow Books, London, 2003, p. 85.

Why Mindfulness is better than Chocolate

Is mindfulness really better than chocolate?

All of human unhappiness is due to the inability to sit still in a room alone.Blaise Pascal

Is mindfulness really better than chocolate? Come to think of it, is anything better than chocolate? Or is the title of this book nothing more than a shameless ploy to grab your attention? As it happens, the idea that mindfulness is better than chocolate is based on compelling research. More than 2000 people in the United States took part in an innovative study using smartphone technology. Panel members were sent questions at different times of the day and night asking what they were doing, what they were thinking and how happy they felt.

The analysis, published by Harvard University psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert in Science magazine, revealed three important facts. First, people were not thinking about what they were doing 47 per cent of the time. Second, people were unhappier when their minds were wandering than when they were not. And third, what people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than what they were doing.

The researchers summarised: ‘A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.’

Long ago, Buddhists reached much the same conclusion. An ancient tale tells of a novice who asked an enlightened monk to reveal the secret of happiness. The monk told him, ‘I eat, and I walk and I sleep.’ When the novice replied that he also did these things, the monk replied, ‘When I eat, I eat. When I walk, I walk. When I sleep, I sleep.’

Buddha and the Harvard Psychology Department are most definitely on the same page when it comes to mindfulness. And the Harvard findings are rich with implications for human behaviour.

But what concerns us right now is chocolate.

The study shows we’re at our happiest when our mind is not wandering—that is, when we’re in a state of mindfulness. But ‘the nature of people’s activities had only a modest impact on whether their minds wandered’. It would seem that whether we’re washing the dishes or eating the most mouth-wateringly delicious Belgian praline, we’re just as likely to have a wandering mind. Eating chocolate is no guarantee that we’re thinking about what we’re doing.

Which is why mindfulness will always trump chocolate as a means of delivering happiness.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there’s one human activity where mindfulness is consistently high: sex. Only 10 per cent of people reported their minds wandering during this activity, so if I’d called this book ‘Why mindfulness is better than sex’, I would have found myself on much shakier ground.

Incidentally, one can’t help speculating on what those 10 per cent of people who reported wandering minds during sex were actually thinking about. Could the old cliché of grocery lists be true? More research, please!

I will admit, however, to being a little mischievous in creating a false dichotomy between mindfulness and choco-late. There’s no reason to choose between the two. On the contrary, the highlight of my mindfulness seminars is often an exercise I call ‘the Lindt technique’, where I invite participants to mindfully enjoy a Lindt chocolate. Their instructions are to focus exclusively on the sensation of eating a chocolate, every element in forensic detail, from opening the foil wrapper to the appearance and heft of the sphere, the explosion of delicious flavours, and savouring the smooth, liquid heart of the chocolate as it bursts in the mouth.

Are you salivating yet?

For two or three minutes a blissful silence ensues. Mind--fulness applied to the eating of chocolate—there’s something that can give even the proverbial grocery lists a run for their money!

Mindfulness in the mainstream

Both mindfulness and meditation have become very fashionable of late. Just as the cheesecloth and hashish brigade of the 1970s have long since matured to become pillars of the establishment, so too our understanding of meditation has evolved in recent decades from hippie-trippy mysticism to mainstream practice.

Although the difference between meditation and mindfulness will be described in more detail later, at the outset it’s important to note the distinction between the two words. When we’re being mindful, we’re paying attention to the present moment, deliberately and non-judgementally. When we’re meditating, we’re being mindful of a specific object—such as the sensation of the breath at the tip of our nostrils—for a sustained period of time. Meditation is, if you like, the training ground for mindfulness. Regular meditation enhances our ability to be mindful. We can all enjoy mindfully drinking a cup of coffee without the benefit of meditation practice, but our capacity for mindfulness is greatly enhanced if we meditate regularly.

Doctors these days are as likely to recommend meditation for stress management as they are to prescribe medication. Many of the world’s highest profile consumer companies, such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter, actively support meditation in their workplaces, as do some of the largest financial institutions, accounting firms, manufacturers and other corporations. No best practice management school is complete these days without a mindful leadership program. The world’s most elite athletes, sports stars and performing artists employ techniques borrowed from the mindfulness toolbox. Mindfulness is a foundation practice across the increasingly popular practices of yoga, tai chi and a variety of martial arts. Meditation programs are demonstrably among the most successful deployed in prisons to reduce re-offence rates. A wave of research since the turn of the century at laboratories in California, New England, Europe and Australia is focusing on the emerging discipline of contemplative neuroscience. Even the US Marines have got in on the act, coaching soldiers in meditation-based exercises before deploying them in the world’s most angerous war zones.

Mindfulness practices are millennia old, originating in eastern traditions, notably Buddhism, which has extensively practised, debated, documented and taught a range of techniques for a variety of purposes. Given that Buddhism has at its heart a reverence for all forms of life, the idea of teaching meditation to soldiers about to parachute into battle may well raise the eyebrows of some. But in describing the exercise as ‘like doing push-ups for the brain’, the US Army general respons-ible pithily summarised the way meditation has been reframed: just as a healthy body demands regular exercise, goes this paradigm, a healthy mind requires the same.

This move to the mainstream has inevitably been accompanied by a flurry of books. Without any particular plan to build a library on the subject, I have on my personal bookshelves alone a section of books on mindfulness and meditation about a metre long, picked up here and there in recent years. These books espouse a variety of approaches ranging from the determinedly practical to the quirkily esoteric.

Books I don’t have on my shelves include those by an ever-expanding group of self-styled teachers and mindfulness gurus who go to quite some lengths in the pursuit of mystification. A liberal sprinkling of ™ and © signs is usually warning enough. The requirement to spend large sums of money on weekend intensives should also cause the brow to wrinkle. For the truth is that mindfulness is a simple subject—difficult to practise, no question, but straight-forward to explain.

Given all this, does the world need yet another book on mindfulness?

The dumbing down of mindfulness

Some months ago I was delivering a mindfulness seminar to a group of engineers at a business school. The participants were an engaged bunch, and a meditation exercise was followed by a lively Q&A session, during which I was asked: ‘Why do Buddhist monks meditate? After all, they don’t have any stress. All they have to do is hang around for the next meal to arrive.’

On the surface of things, this is perhaps a reasonable question. And going by the smiles and nodding, it was clear that this observation chimed with quite a few others in the room. If we assume for a moment that the questioner was essentially correct, and that the life of a Buddhist monk is one long picnic waiting for the next course to be served, it may indeed seem mystifying why stress management would be called for.

But for me the question really summed up the tragically diminished idea many people have of what mindfulness and meditation are all about. Yes, they’re great for managing stress, but that isn’t why Buddhists do them. Stress Management isn’t the main reason, nor even a particularly important part of our motivation. To put things in a current, western perspective, it was as if my questioner was asking why people who aren’t on Facebook bother with internet access. Why else would you want to go online?

I felt the need to write this book because I to share the real treasure of mindfulness—its truly transformative power, the authentic reason Buddhist monks meditate. This explanation is left behind, overlooked, dumbed down or never even explored by some contemporary mindfulness teachers—and not necessarily with bad intentions. Mindfulness Lite is an easier sell to a wide audience, and can’t the world use as many mindful people as possible, albeit of the ‘push-ups for the brain’ variety? Besides, the benefits of meditation are so numerous and now so well established by researchers that you don’t need to take people too far along the journey for them to start noticing the favourable physical and psychological effects, so why go further?

At the heart of this reluctance to venture into the heartland of meditation, I’m guessing, is also a certain fear. When people are given the tools to observe the true nature of their own minds for themselves, the experience is a subtle but in-evitable game-changer. When the rug is well and truly pulled out from beneath the confection of the ‘self’ we have come to believe ourselves to be, we can never experience ourselves in quite the same way again. Like being able to see the alternative perspective in one in those famous optical illusions, we can never go back to our former innocence. Our view of our ‘self’ changes forever.

East and West

In writing this book, I’m doing so not as a Buddhist monk—tempting though the prospect of a lifetime’s free catering may be—nor as someone claiming any preternatural mental abilities. The prosaic truth is that I’m a regular middle-aged corporate consultant with many of the usual personal, business and financial responsibilities. In the midst of this typically busy 21st-century life, I have nevertheless found, in meditation and mindfulness, practices that have transformed my experience of reality dramatically for the better. And I know from talking to other meditators that it’s the same for them, too.

My own meditation journey has been informed by Tibetan Buddhism, in particular the lineage established in Australia by the pre-eminent Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden and, more directly, through the teachings I’ve received from my kind and precious teacher, Les Sheehy. While the knowledge and experience I have acquired has been guided by them, any failure in my attempt to pass on their profound wisdom is very much my own doing.

While I will refer to Buddhist sources and insights where relevant, it’s important to note that the study of our own minds isn’t about theory or belief. It’s about seeing what’s there for ourselves. I’ll also refer to research from scientific endeavours in fields as varied as psychology, neuroscience, medicine, genetics and quantum physics.

One of the joys of being alive in the early part of the 21st century is witnessing the convergence of so many different dynamics—ancient and contemporary, outer and inner, eastern and western—in arriving at a holistic understanding of consciousness.

For some people, the proliferation of empirical studies showing the benefits of mindfulness encourages personal exploration. Others have a more intuitive understanding of the value of this practice. I hope in this book to share ideas that will inspire both intuitive and analytical thinkers, both left-brain and right-brain thinkers.

I have also intentionally interwoven chapters on mindfulness theory with those explaining how to practise meditation. As fascinating as concepts of mindfulness are, the only way they can have a powerful personal impact is if we apply them. Ideas, theories and evidence only get us so far. Then we need to move beyond concept.In my previous non-fiction books, Buddhism for Busy People, Hurry Up and Meditate and Enlightenment to Go, I’ve shared some of the experiences of my own journey, and I do so in this book, too. This isn’t because I’m the repository of especially arcane insights, but because I hope you’ll find in this more personal account—rather than a straightforward exposition of the subject—themes and discoveries you can relate to, landmarks that may be useful in your own -exploration of the mind.

An outline of the mindfulness journey

We begin our exploration with the nuts and bolts of mindfulness—what it is, why it works and how we can benefit from it in basic but profound ways. Stress management? Certainly! Boosting our immune systems and pushing back our biological clocks? That too! The physical and psychological benefits of mindfulness, even if taken no further than this, are well worth getting out of bed ten minutes earlier for every morning.

We then move onto the possibilities offered by mindfulness in changing the content of your ongoing conversation with yourself. Chatter, chatter, chatter. We’re all up to it. But are there recurring themes in this constant stream of self-talk that don’t serve you well? For example, are you a worrier, constantly anticipating all the things that could possibly go wrong then convincing yourself that the worst outcome is almost certain? Or are you a victim, feeling you can never make any headway because of your circumstances, past events or the people in your life? Or are you someone who struggles to find any compelling purpose or happiness beyond filling your days with as many pleasurable distractions as possible?

The combination of mindfulness with what has become known as cognitive behaviour training is one of the most powerful transformation modalities. Creating space amid all the mental agitation, discovering that we can become the observers of our thoughts rather than their unwitting slaves—this is another extraordinary consequence of a more mindful life. It’s a consequence that allows us to get proactive about what goes on in our mind, take charge of our own mental trajectories and thereby exercise choice over the destinies to which our every thought propels us.

The main event—mind itself

And then we come to mind itself. What it is. What it is not. We’re no longer doing push-ups here—we’re onto something much more exciting! I’ll guide you through the practical steps by which you can experience your own mind for yourself, not as a concept or intellectual idea, but directly and firsthand. You’ll be empowered to experience the nature of your own consciousness, and if you’re anything like most people who’ve never tried this before, you’ll find, in those first glimpses of the pure nature of your own mind, an extraordinary truth. You’ll see for yourself how your mind is, quite literally, infinite. How it has no beginning and no end. How, far from being some existential void, it’s imbued with the most profound happiness-giving qualities.

You’ll experience the paradox that even though you set out to explore your mind, the result is as much a feeling as it is a perception. It’s an experience beyond concept and for which words are therefore wholly inadequate, but that may be hinted at using such terms as ‘oceanic tranquillity’ and ‘radiant love’.

Even the briefest encounter with this state is life-changing, because when we can free ourselves from the agitation or dullness that pervades our minds and encounter our own true natures, if only momentarily, we can never go back to believing ourselves to be nothing more than a bag of bones. We have experienced a dimension of being that transcends all our usual ideas of self.

We have come home.

When we begin to explore our own mind, we usually do so for reasons of self-discovery. But an interesting thing happens, because in experiencing our own true nature, we come to recognise that just as we are, others are too. Our everyday experience of people is one in which we habitually observe and judge based on what we see, at a conventional level, as their apparent characteristics.

Discovering that these characteristics are, ultimately, as temporary and insignificant as our own, a shift occurs. Others may continue the way they’ve always seemed to be, but now we know better. Aware of the more important way in which they exist, as well as the difficulties and challenges they must inevitably endure because of their profoundly self-limiting beliefs, our compassion quite naturally arises. Mindfulness is no longer just about ‘me’. It becomes panoramic.

I can think of nothing more enduringly fascinating or life-enhancing than the practice of mindfulness. No matter where you are on your own journey, I hope you find in this book fresh insights and inspiration to encourage your further exploration. In particular, it’s my heartfelt wish that you may abide, however fleetingly, in your own unobstructed mind. For there you’ll discover that your own true nature is one of timeless and transcendental bliss.

Chocolate, schmocolate. Show me the meditation cushion!

Buddhism For Busy People

Hurry Up and Meditate

Enlightment to Go

The Astral Traveler's Handbook

The Queen's Corgi

Prologue

This book is being written by royal decree.

Well, sort of.

It all began on my favourite day of the year – the first of the Queen’s annual summer visit to Balmoral Castle in Scotland. We three royal corgis were in a state of high excitement.

Having travelled up from Windsor with the household staff the previous day, we had arrived too late to see the Queen, who had already retired for the evening. Still closeted in a downstairs scullery when the family had left for church that morning, we were released just a few minutes before they were expected home.

The three of us romped through the ground floor, reacquainting ourselves with favourite suntraps and hidey-holes. We snuffled at the hearthrugs on which we had spent many a happy evening toasting ourselves before glowing log fires. We poked our snouts into half-forgotten corners, and raised them inquisitively towards the window, taking in the scents of gorse and heather, evocations of rambling country walks in summers past.

Winston, older than the Queen herself – albeit in dog years – headed with unusual haste towards the drawing room: the scene of his most tantalising discovery to date. It was behind a leather wing chair in the room, five years earlier, that he had come upon an overlooked and entirely uneaten plate of lobster vol-au-vents. He had devoured the snack in minutes. No matter how many unrewarded return visits he made to the room, whenever he turned in its direction the memory of that glorious find would light up his grizzled features.

Margaret, meantime, was trotting through the corridors, ears pointed and eyes alert. Her herding instincts stronger than most royal corgis, and her demand for service absolute, she was especially watchful of the staff. As every liveried helper in the royal household was painfully aware, the slightest infraction or delay could provoke a cautioning nip to the ankles.

I soon found my way to the large bay window in the dining room, and hopped up onto the broad, tartan-cushioned sill overlooking a corner of the garden. Twelve months before, that corner had been Football’s favourite spot. Over the years I had struck up a special friendship with the large, marmalade cat who was a permanent resident of Balmoral. But scanning the landscape I could see no sign of him at present.

The sound of footmen and security heading towards the main entrance had all three of us racing from different parts of the castle as fast as our short legs would carry us. The front door was opened and from it we watched as the familiar convoy of cars approached the castle before slowing to a gracious stop. We scrambled down the short flight of steps. No matter which of the cars the Queen occupied, our canine instincts always led us unerringly to it.

You may very well wonder what it is like to find yourself in the presence of the Queen. Having seen a million of images of her on TV and in the papers, encountering her profile daily on banknotes, coins and postage stamps, it is only natural that you’d be curious to know how it feels to encounter one of the world’s most famous people directly and in person.

Well, my fellow subject, let me enlighten you. When you meet the Queen, she is exactly as you would expect her to be – in appearance, at least. But she has another quality that catches most people by surprise. A quality which no television camera can capture and which few members of the media pack, corralled firmly behind ever-present railings, gets close enough to discover. You see, such is the Queen’s sense of calling that, wherever she goes, she carries with her an almost-tangible expectation that your own deepest wish, like hers, is to serve a greater purpose.

To say that most people are caught unawares by this sensation would be an understatement. Expecting restrained and aloof, when they encounter Her Majesty’s gentle but firm expectation of benevolence, they find themselves wishing – perhaps to their own surprise – to be the best that they can be. To act in accord with their highest ideals. I have witnessed many people who are so taken aback by this unspoken appeal to their own better natures that they’re quite overcome with emotion.

‘Hello, my little ones!’ the Queen greeted us that day as she emerged from the car. Winston and Margaret were red and white Pembrokes, while I had the distinction of a sable-coloured saddle on my back. All three of us rushed about her ankles, our tail stubs wagging frenziedly. We were as delighted to feel her gloved hands patting our necks as she seemed thrilled to see us after more than 24 hours apart.

Soon the whole family was heading inside.

‘Very nice service,’ the Queen remarked as they made their way to the drawing room.

‘Kenneth always has something sensible to say,’ agreed Camilla.

‘Outside the church was a bit worrying,’ observed Charles. ‘How many journalists?’ Tugging at his earlobe, he used much the same tone of voice as if querying a troubling aphid infestation at his rose garden at Highgrove.

‘Twice as many as last year,’ said William.

‘The numbers are growing.’ The Queen was apprehensive.

One of the reasons she so enjoyed these visits to Scotland was the opportunity to get away from the constant prying of telephoto lenses and long-range microphones.

As Her Majesty settled on a sofa, Philip eased himself down gingerly beside her. He looked over at her, with a fiercely protective expression, lips quivering.

‘Bloody journalists!’ he said.

‘One of them called out to Kate wanting an interview,’ announced William.

‘The nerve!’ harrumphed Charles. The church in nearby Crathie had traditionally been a photo opportunity-only venue, with journalists expected to keep their distance.

As the rest of the family sat down, the household staff brought in tea and scones.

‘Well, I shan’t let them spoil my holiday,’ declared Anne. ‘I shall simply ignore them.’

The expressions of the others suggested that this was advice they found difficult to follow.

‘They won’t go away, Gran.’ Unlike the other family members, Harry was sitting on the floor massaging Margaret’s ears as she gazed at him beatifically. ‘Unless,’ he continued, ‘you give them something.’

The Queen, like Margaret, had always had a soft spot for Harry, valuing him as a direct conduit to the younger generation. ‘What might that be?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘Not sure. We’d have to come up with something.’

Kate was nodding. ‘Something safe and light-hearted. Something summer-y.’

‘Like who designed your T-shirt?’ joked William.

‘And,’ she responded, ‘whether it was … Made in Britain?’ The last three words were chorused by all the younger royals, having learned, to their cost, the furore that would accompany their purchase of items that weren’t manufactured in the UK – or a Commonwealth country at least.

‘Such a pity the media insist on running page after page of drivel,’ Charles repeated his oft-made observation. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if newspapers did more to share stories and insights that were really meaningful? Things that might help people lead more purposeful lives.’

The Queen glanced over at him, uncertainly. ‘Tricky business, persuading the media to lift their sights from terror and trivia. Every one of us has tried.’

Pushing myself up so that I was balancing on my rear end, I fixed Kate with a pleading expression. She was a soft touch when it came to scones.

There was a pause while the family glanced in my direction. Before Kate said, ‘Well, not every family member.’

‘Genius!’ congratulated Harry. Then, responding to the bafflement of the older royals, ‘We offer the media a story about the royal corgis. Videos and photos. A few words about their personalities. Then they can skedaddle for the summer, leaving us in peace.’

William raised an eyebrow. ‘Worth a try.’

‘We might even get one of the corgis to say something meaningful,’ joked Harry, trying to win his father around.

‘I’m sure Winston would have a great deal to say if he didn’t get sidetracked,’ replied Charles drolly.

Harry pulled a face, and, in a stage whisper, said, ‘Vol-au-vents!’

The family laughed.

‘You can forget Margaret,’ said Anne. ‘Given half a chance she’d leave them all bleeding at the ankles.’

At this point Her Majesty, who had yet to comment on the idea, observed, ‘It would have to be Nelson. He has always been the most diplomatic of the corgis.’

Realising that my attempt to coax a scone out of Duchess Kate was futile – she was not going to do so in front of the Queen – I dropped to the floor and made my way over to Her Majesty.

‘Perhaps you could say something meaningful on our behalf? Something about purpose?’ the Queen enquired looking directly at me.

‘After the life he’s led,’ observed Kate, ‘he could write a whole book.’

‘Splendid idea,’ the Queen replied, smiling. ‘The Queen’s Corgi! One would be most interested to read it.’

And so, in a metaphorical sense, the ball was thrown.

Mulling over the conversation in the glorious days that followed, I began to realize just how true Kate’s observation was. It was a rare week when I didn’t come nose to ankle – if not snout to groin – with the most famous people in showbiz, arts, sports and spirituality. There were few of the world’s most pre-eminent politicians, pop stars or philosophers who weren’t, at some point, ushered into the royal presence. I had sniffed them all, even peed on a few, but let’s not spoil this first chapter by bringing dog-eating despots into it.

Not only had I met a richly varied and colourful range of human beings, along with a great many bores, I had also been witness to extraordinary encounters that most people will never see. I had eavesdropped on intriguing insights from the highest-level advisers, the best of the best, with whom Her Majesty consults.

What’s more, it struck me that the never-ending flow of TV and press coverage, films and books about the royal family had one singular thing in common – they were all from a human perspective. Where was the dog’s-eye view? The under-the-table account? What people discovered about the Queen, from the perspective of her most diplomatic of Pembroke Welsh Corgis would, I had no doubt at all, prove refreshingly different.

So here we are, you and me embarking on this journey together. One filled with intriguing aromas, wagging tail stumps and something else I am supposed to remember. What was it again? Ah, yes – purpose.

What’s the point of it all, people sometimes ask? The crowns and castles. The pomp and circumstance. Why bother? Who cares? How can the royal family possibly add to the sum of human happiness – and, let’s not forget, canine, feline and other -ine happiness too?

Perhaps the answers to some of those questions will be revealed in the pages that follow.

Perhaps not.

But one thing I am sure of, my fellow subject: it is not by chance that you hold this book in your hands.

Chapter One

From my earliest days I was aware of a place called ‘the shed’. To begin with I had no idea where it was. But on the very rare occasions that the Grimsleys paid me any attention, ‘the shed’ was invoked. And even as a puppy only a few weeks old, I knew instinctively that it was a place where terrible things happened.

I was born into the most humble of circumstances, under the kitchen sink in a cramped terraced house in Slough. The youngest in a litter of five pups, and very much smaller than the others, I soon found myself competing for space and attention not only with my immediate brothers and sisters, who shared a sack in the carcass of what used to be a kitchen cupboard, but also with two older and sturdier litters belonging to other mothers in the house. There were over twenty of us in all.

It was not an even competition. My size counted against me, as did my right ear which, instead of standing, flopped. Desperate for the same affection the Grimsleys bestowed on the other pups, it seemed that my dysfunctional ear rendered me unloveable.

In the rough and ready chaos of discarded pizza boxes and crushed cans of Fosters beer, dirty laundry and the ever-present, pungent aroma of kipper, the house was completely given over to corgis. We were everywhere: under the kitchen bench, where cupboard doors had been removed to create kennels; nesting behind sitting room sofas; suckling and scratching under the Grimsleys’ bed.

On the rare occasion I came to the attention of Mrs Grimsley, she’d jab her cigarette towards me in distaste. ‘Still not standing,’ she’d say with a sigh, exhaling a stream of acrid smoke.

Mr Grimsley, a very large man in worn, denim overalls with watery blue eyes, would stare at me in slack-jawed silence.

‘You’re going to have to take it down the shed,’ Mrs Grimsley would instruct.

‘Give it time,’ Mr Grimsley might say. ‘Perhaps he’s a late bloomer.’

‘That’s always been your problem, Reg.’ Mrs Grimsley’s voice was brittle. ‘Too soft. Waste of Kibbles, that one.’

None of the corgis knew exactly what happened in the shed. Other dogs were said to have been taken there in the past – all of them stunted in some way. The only thing known for certain was that once a corgi went to the shed, it was never seen again.

On Saturday mornings, the Grimsleys would be transformed, Mr Grimsley appearing downstairs first, having squeezed uncomfortably into a dark suit, followed by pencil-thin Mrs Grimsley, all blonde hair and red lipstick, talking in her Kennel Club voice.

‘Are Tarquin and Annabelle in the car?’ she’d want to know. ‘In their show collars? Where’s Tudor’s pedigree?’

A lengthy and restive day indoors for all the dogs would be followed by an even-lengthier evening waiting for the Grimsleys to get home from whichever home county they had visited, usually followed by a lock-in at the local pub, The Crown. Being small and vulnerable, I usually avoided the scamper and tumble of the other corgis, only venturing far from the kitchen cupboard in the reassuring presence of my eldest brother, Jasper.

‘Hurry up, Number Five.’ He’d cock his head playfully, trying to coax me out; I was the only corgi in the house that had no name. ‘There’s a whole week’s laundry to get our teeth into!’

In the early hours of a Sunday morning, Mrs Grimsley would lurch through the front door, Mr Grimsley stumbling after her in his great, dark, tent of a suit, and Tarquin and Annabelle plodding behind, exhausted by a day trapped in cage and car.

‘Don’t you just love corgis?!’ Mrs Grimsley would slump into a chair, grabbing banknotes out of her handbag and tossing them up in the air so that they fluttered, confetti-like, all around her. ‘Eight hundred pounds! And another seven pups as good as sold. Oh, Annabelle, my little darling!’ she’d croon in a way that she never did for me. ‘What a wonder you are!’

One by one, as the older pups reached a certain age, they were taken out to meet their new owners in the nearby park. The Grimsleys avoided having buyers to their home, the front door being hard to access on account of the two Morris Minors rusting on bricks in the driveway. They had been a decaying fixture for as long as anyone knew, awaiting the day that Mr Grimsley began to restore them to classic glory.

On the rare occasion that a visitor unavoidably came to the house, I was hastily shut in the upstairs box room. ‘Ruin our reputation, it would,’ Mrs Grimsley used to declare, ‘having this one seen with its ear. We can’t having people thinking we breed bitsas.’

There could be no harsher condemnation than for a dog than to be described as a ‘bitsa’, as the Grimsleys referred to dogs of uncertain breeding – a bit of this and a bit of that.

As the weeks passed, Mrs Grimsley took more and more of the older dogs to the park, returning alone, an unused lead wrapped around one hand, and bulging wallet in the other. Then my own immediate brothers and sisters began to be sold off. The once-cramped conditions under the kitchen sink became strangely spacious, the reassuring crush of bodies less dense.

As I became more and more visible, I was the focus of the same, sinister conversation. Mrs Grimsley’s demand that I be taken to the shed became increasingly shrill. Mr Grimsley dropped all talk of me being a late bloomer.

‘I’ll see to it,’ he’d promise her, darkly.

One day I turned to Jasper and asked what Mr Grimsley meant.

‘Hard to guess, Number Five, but I wouldn’t worry about it.’ He looked away. ‘According to our mother, he’s been saying he’ll see to the two Morris Minors since the time of our great-grandparents.’

I knew Jasper was trying to be reassuring. But I could sense his disquiet.

And Mrs Grimsley wasn’t letting go. Things reached an all-time low the afternoon that she returned alone from having taken Jasper himself to the park, with the rolled-up lead in one hand and an envelope in the other. I realised what had happened but still stared foolishly at the front door as though I could somehow will my big brother back to the house. Eventually I looked up. Mrs Grimsley was staring at me with an expression of cold determination.

‘It’s no good, Reg!’ She shouted to her husband, who was coming down the stairs. ‘You’re going to have to take it down the shed.’

‘But –’

‘Gone on long enough.’ She was insistent. ‘Today!’

‘I’m just on my way out –’

‘Right now.’

‘Alright.’ He flapped his heavy arms in surrender. ‘Alright. When I get back from The Crown.’

‘I’ll hold you do it.’

‘I’ll see to it then.’

Returning to the cupboard under the kitchen sink, I slumped down in a state of abject misery. Even though it was hard being a stunted, unloved corgi in a house filled with bright-eyed pedigrees who were lavished with affection, I preferred staying where I was than to having to face the unknown horror at the bottom of the garden.

Mrs Grimsley was watching Eastenders in the front room when the there was a knocking at the door.

‘Who is it?’ she called from the hallway.

‘I’ve come about a corgi!’ A woman’s voice sounded clear and authoritative.

‘Hang on a minute.’

Finding me in the kitchen, Mrs Grimsley closed the door firmly before going to greet her visitor.

‘I hear you may have a puppy for sale –’

‘All gone,’ interrupted Mrs Grimsley briskly. ‘I can put you on the waiting list. We’re expecting a litter next month.’

‘This particular puppy,’ said the other woman, ‘has a floppy ear.’

There was a pause while Mrs Grimsley inhaled.

‘Don’t know where you heard that,’ she pronounced smokily. ‘The pedigree of our corgis is impeccable.’

‘I’m quite sure it is.’ The other woman seemed altogether unruffled by her reaction.

‘We don’t breed duds,’ insisted Mrs Grimsley.

‘A floppy ear is only a problem if you plan to show. We have no such plans.’

‘Don’t know where this tittle tattle comes from.’

‘Mr Grimsley, actually. At The Crown.’

‘The bloody idiot!’ screeched Mrs Grimsley in a voice that was definitely not Kennel Club.

‘Look.’ The other woman’s voice was firm. ‘I’ll pay you a thousand pounds for him.’

The pause that followed didn’t last very long before I heard the sound of approaching footsteps. The kitchen door being opened. For the first time since I was a very new puppy, Mrs Grimsley picked me up. ‘He’s actually our little favourite,’ she crooned in a voice she’d never used before with me – the one she only adopted when cuddling her favourites. As she turned, I found myself looking into the kindly face of a very beautiful woman in her late thirties. I pricked up my ears – well, the left one, and half of the right.

‘Good.’ The woman reached into her handbag and retrieved a clip of crisp, new banknotes, which she held out.

Mrs Grimsley looked at the notes only briefly before taking them in her right hand, and thrusting me into the visitor’s arms.

‘Promise not to say where you got him,’ she demanded, in her smoker’s voice.

‘Fine.’

‘I never want to hear of him again.’

‘You won’t.’

I immediately felt safe in the arms of the visitor. As she held me to her chest in a manner that suggested she was used to holding dogs, along with a faint scent of lavender I sensed a calm reassurance that couldn’t be more different to Mrs Grimsley.

‘If you mention me –’ Mrs Grimsley was following us out of the house ‘– I’ll deny all knowledge. I’ll say you’re a lying toerag.’

‘Oh, you needn’t trouble yourself on that score, Mrs Grimsley,’ said the woman, stepping across the short front yard and into the street. ‘I’m quite happy to forget that we ever met.’

The drive from the Grimsleys’ terrace house in Slough to Windsor Castle wasn’t a long one. Fewer than twenty minutes in the car separated what was to become my new life from my old. But even though I was in a dog carrier in the back of a car – both unfamiliar experiences – driven by a woman who was a complete stranger, I felt a powerful sense of relief; compared to being taken down to the shed, it couldn’t be as bad.

Could it?

I won’t pretend to remember much of my first arrival at Windsor Castle. In the twilight it was all a confusion of gates and security checks and dark passages smelling of beeswax until, all of a sudden, I was in a spacious, red-carpeted hallway, hung with paintings and lit by chandeliers. My rescuer, who I discovered was called Lady Tara, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, walked purposefully along the hallway, with me still in the carrier, before making her way up a staircase.

This was nothing like the stairs I was used to. Not only were they very much wider and more luxuriously carpeted, there was not a single pile of unwashed laundry, nor even a crushed beer can to be seen. Nor was there the faintest tang of kipper. My first impression of the castle was also how vast the rooms were. And how empty of corgis.

I was suddenly somewhat startled by a soldier, armoured in ancient chain mail, who was standing at attention on the staircase landing. And somewhat surprised that Tara completely ignored him, brushing past him as if he wasn’t there.

After walking along another broad corridor, similarly void of dogs, Tara took me into a suite of rooms before coming to a door that was slightly ajar. Reaching into the carrier, she lifted me out, before knocking gently.

We walked across a very large room, at the other side of which a short, silver-haired woman was working at her desk. The room had dark, wood-panelled walls, the only light coming from a desk lamp, which glowed warmly, illuminating the woman’s features. Even at first glance, my fellow subject, I knew there was something different about her. Something that set her apart. It didn’t have to do with her appearance so much as an invisible – but no less tangible – sense of presence.

As soon as she saw us approaching, she rose to her feet.

‘So, this is him?’ she asked, coming to meet us.

‘Yes ma’am.’

Him, I noted, not the it by which Mrs Grimsley had always referred to me.

Stepping closer, the lady I would soon learn was the Queen beamed as she reached out to stroke my head. ‘Handsome little chap. Beautiful markings.’

I responded to her attention by pricking up one and a half ears.

‘Oh, I see. Gives him such character, don’t you think?’

Too young to understand exactly what she meant, I knew from her tone of voice that the Queen seemed to be saying that my floppy ear was a good thing. What an utterly amazing and wonderful idea! I was immediately licking her hand.

She chuckled. ‘Friendly little fellow.’

‘Hard to believe what they were planning to do to him,’ observed Tara.

‘Yes, but we shouldn’t judge,’ replied the Queen. ‘Not everyone enjoys our circumstances.’

In the pause that followed I wondered what those plans had been, beyond my being taken to the shed. It would be months before I discovered the full story and how, the moment that Tara told Her Majesty about my impending fate at the hands of Mr Grimsley, she had been dispatched to rescue me.

‘I’m sure he’s going to settle in very well,’ said the Queen.

‘Would you like me to take him down to join the others?’

‘He’s probably had enough to deal with for one day. He can stay with me tonight,’ Her Majesty said with a nod, before turning back towards her desk.

It took me a while to realise that I had a new home. A permanent one. It seemed quite surreal that instead of the kitchen cupboard, I had been transported to this strange place with its empty rooms and not a whiff of cigarette smoke, much less stale beer.

Taking me to the private sitting room next door, Tara produced a bowl of food more delicious than even the finest the Grimsleys used to serve to their champion pedigrees. I wolfed it down in short order, and took a few laps of water. A very comfortable basket was brought for me to sleep in. I gathered that the sitting room was where I was to remain for the time being.

My feelings about this new place were strangely mixed. My initial relief was soon followed by acute loneliness – for the first time in my life I was without a very large and extended family, and, most especially, without Jasper. As a very small, underdeveloped pup, on my very first night away from home, I wished I could be back in familiar surroundings –without the threat of the shed, of course.

Tara looked in on me several times that evening, always dependably comforting, as did several men I came to know, both individually and collectively, as ‘security’.

Nevertheless, I was feeling quite bereft by the time I heard the Queen saying goodnight to a man called Philip. As soon as she came through the door, I jumped out of my basket and hurried over to her, tail stump wagging. She bent down and made a great fuss of me, before coming over to pick up the basket, which she took through to her bedroom, placing it near the side of her bed.

I watched her return later in her bedclothes. Sitting up against the pillows she closed her eyes, and for quite some time remained silent.

Her Majesty, I soon came to realise, is a deeply spiritual person. Not in a way that feels the need to be voiced, but one, rather, that is implicit in her actions. Not in a narrow, exclusive sense, but founded on personal experience of our own true nature, one that goes well beyond the limits of ordinary conception.

By the time she switched off the light, a peacefulness had descended not only on her, but on the whole room.

‘Welcome to Windsor, little one,’ she whispered in the dark, to reassure me. ‘And goodnight.’

The reassurance worked.

For a while.

Then the pitch blackness of the room, the unfamiliar sounds echoing through the castle corridors, the lack of half a dozen other corgis pressed close to me under the kitchen sink, and the absence of the pong of kipper, made me feel somehow alone and adrift.

I whimpered.

The Queen shushed me.

I was quiet for a while. Before I whimpered again.

‘We can’t have this,’ said the Queen, getting out of bed, and lifting me up on top of it.

Back at the Grimsleys, only the champion pedigrees used to sleep with the humans. And even though at that point I had no idea who Her Majesty was, I still realised I was being accorded a very special privilege.

Snuggling close, I thought how it was through her doing that I had been rescued from the Grimsleys. How it was she who was giving me a new home. How she cared for me even though I had a floppy ear – perhaps even because of it. Gratitude surging through me, and I showed my love in the way that we dogs know best: I licked her face.

‘Oh, no!’ she chuckled, wriggling away.

Thinking she wanted to play, I wriggled after her.

‘If this carries on –’ her tone had changed ‘– I’ll have to take you downstairs.’

Downstairs was not a place I had any wish to be, so, instead, I settled halfway down the bed. Which was how, my fellow subject, on my first night away from under the Grimsleys’ kitchen sink, I slept with the Queen of the United Kingdom.

In the days that followed I learned more about the world than I could ever have imagined. I was fortunate to have as my mentor, the life-long and most faithful companion to the Queen, Winston. I met him and Margaret on my very first morning when we were all fed breakfast in the staff kitchen, where the royal corgis were traditionally fed, and from which we were allowed into the staff garden to answer the call of nature. As it happened, my naivety about royal protocol served me well. Coming from a house full of corgis, as soon as I saw them I wasted no time in introducing myself by sniffing their backsides, my tail stump wagging vigorously.

Margaret, who had no time for stand-offish blue-bloods who thought rather a lot of themselves, decided on that first meeting that I was a corgi she could do business with. Winston, at the advanced age of twelve, saw in me a younger version of himself and had soon adopted me as his protégé.

It was he who patiently explained the facts of my new life.

‘Strange name for a person, “The Queen”,’ I observed that first morning at Windsor Castle.

‘It’s not a name, it’s a title,’ he corrected me. Having started the day with a hearty breakfast of biscuits, the two of us were snuffling round our breakfast bowls in the hope of finding a displaced morsel.

‘Title.’ I pondered for a bit. ‘You mean like “Champion Pedigree”?’

‘Indeed.’ Discovering a fragment of biscuit near the skirting board, Winston had quickly licked it into his mouth and was crunching with immense satisfaction. ‘The Queen is the pre-eminent of all champion pedigrees. She is a direct descendent of William the Conqueror – 1066 and all that.’

I didn’t know what he meant exactly. Or, even, at all. And a pedigree of a thousand years was quite beyond my comprehension. Up till then I had no idea that pedigrees applied to humans, but Winston assured me that they did. My rescuer Tara was a blue blood, he explained, because she had ‘Lady’ in front of her name. Thinking about the Grimsleys, I came to realise how they were almost certainly ‘bitsas’ – an idea that made my head spin.

‘Does the Queen have a real name?’ I continued to parade my ignorance that first morning.

‘It’s “Elizabeth”,’ he said, ‘but no one outside the family has actually called her that since she became Queen. Well, there was one person.’

I looked at him enquiringly.

‘That African fellow. Margaret –’ he looked up to where she sat, ears alert, watching the sous chef whose job it was to feed us ‘– what’s the name of that African president, the one who was overly familiar.’

‘Who?’ She pretended not to have been listening. I could tell she was just being officious and knew exactly who he was talking about.

‘The one with the loud shirts,’ he continued.

‘Nelson Mandela.’

‘That’s him. He called her Elizabeth. Don’t think she minded so much in his case.’

My mind was bursting with questions. ‘Apart from having a title is she just like other humans?’

Winston snorted. I came to know that this most Winstonian of characteristics – somewhere between a sigh and a cough – could mean any number of things: surprise, amusement, outrage or, as at the moment, a combination of world weariness with a sense of profound wisdom.

‘She is and she isn’t,’ he answered after a while.

I was to learn that Winston sometimes spoke in riddles. He was the kind of dog happy to point you in a particular direction, but who preferred you to work things out for yourself.

‘She has a human body, but she was born into extraordinary position and power. You don’t think that happened by chance, do you?’

The truth of the matter was that I hadn’t thought about it at all. The idea of being a Queen was an entirely new concept to me.

‘She is by far the best informed person in Britain.’ Margaret glanced across as the sous chef made his way out of the room. ‘For over sixty years she has been regularly briefed by intelligence agencies, the military, bankers, prime ministers … the most powerful people in the land.’

‘Since time immemorial her family have been the knowledge holders of all the esoteric traditions of Celtic culture –’ a far-away look came into Winston’s eye ‘– handed down through the generations. At the top end of a fishbowl, everyone knows all the concepts. Some embody the dark, and others the light.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘These things,’ he said mysteriously, ‘are better seen than explained. Keep your wits about you. Look sharp.’

There was a pause while I digested both my breakfast as well as the intriguing reality in which I had found myself.

There was another question I just had to ask. ‘Why all the red carpets?’

‘Why indeed,’ intoned Winston.

‘Red is the colour of royalty.’ Margaret was matter-of-fact. ‘Of strength and power.’

‘It is also the symbol of bloodlines and lineage,’ observed Winston.

‘Champion pedigrees?’ I confirmed.

‘Yes.’ He regarded me closely, scrutinising my features as though trying to make up his mind about something, before finally saying, ‘For those who embody the esoteric path, the same energies may return to the same bloodlines.’

This was a great deal for a corgi new to the household – and a pup at that – to try to understand.

‘Well,’ I mused after a while, ‘does all this mean that are we unlike other corgis?’

‘Of course!’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘We are Her Majesty’s representatives.’

‘Ours is not so much a position,’ intoned Winston, ‘as a sacred duty. World without end.’

‘Amen.’ Margaret, finished off, with a lick of the lips.

Winston and Margaret explained that even though we were the Queen’s corgis, I shouldn’t expect to spend much time with her every day. A relentless calendar of activity meant that for much of the year she had little time to herself. But she would try to include us in as many of her activities as possible.

As it happened, that very first morning we were with Her Majesty when she received a visitor – my first witness of a royal audience. I watched in fascination as Lord Cranleigh entered the room and approached where the Queen was standing, the three of us at her feet. Margaret bared her teeth ever so slightly as the large, tall, silvering man in the dark suit came closer, before bowing very deeply.

‘How do you do?’ The Queen extended her hand for the briefest handshake, before gesturing towards a chair.

The two of them sat, joined by the sovereign’s private secretary, a genial man called Julian. Tea was brought in, and a discussion followed about Her Majesty’s forthcoming visit to the Lake District.

Taking my cue from Winston and Margaret, I lay down on a nearby oriental carpet of great antiquity. While the two other corgis dozed through what, for them, was just another day at the office, I rested my face between my front paws and watched the Queen intently.

Something about the atmosphere of the room – of the whole castle – felt special and otherworldly. Later I was to discover that it was the oldest and longest-occupied castle in Europe. Its history was almost tangible, along with the design of this room with its very high ceilings, tall windows and sumptuous fittings. A very large chamber lit only by the light of the window, and picture lamps that blazed above large, gilt-framed oil paintings of the Queen’s ancestors, there was the sense of being in an inner sanctum, a place from which you could experience an unusually rarefied view of the world. In time I came to know that the feeling didn’t actually come from castle or its fittings – it came from the presence of Her Majesty. And it was a presence she encouraged others to share.

I discovered this for myself on that very first morning when conversation took a sudden turn in my direction. Arrangements for the Lake District having been duly discussed, the Queen rose to her feet, thus signalling to Lord Cranleigh that his audience was over. As the two men made their way to the door, the Queen stood. Winston and Margaret roused themselves and went to see them off. I followed.

‘Ah – a third corgi!’ observed Lord Cranleigh.

Julian glanced in my direction. ‘Joined us only last night.’

‘The ear,’ the Lord murmured under his breath as the two men reached the door.

‘What’s that?’ Her Majesty’s hearing was much more acute than many imagined.

‘I was just saying …’ Lord Cranleigh turned, struggling to find the right form of words ‘… your new corgi’s ear …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, it’s not sort of … it isn’t entirely … the way it’s presenting …’

‘It flops.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘What of it?’

‘Well, it’s just that all your other dogs being normal, I’m a bit … surprised.’

‘His hearing is just as good as the others. He’s quite normal.’

‘Quite so, ma’am,’ Lord Cranleigh agreed very quickly.

‘Being young, he’s in need of reassurance.’ The Queen took a few steps towards where the men were standing. ‘If we want him to grow up happy and well adjusted, he needs our affection and support. That’s what really matters.’ She spoke deliberately. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Lord Cranleigh?’

‘Of course, ma’am. Without question.’

‘It’s important not to get sidetracked by the superficial.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘When we make judgements about things based on appearance, instead of on what really matters, we get into trouble.’ She was holding Lord Cranleigh’s eyes firmly, but not without warmth. ‘Our own well-being and the well-being of those around us depends on being guided by the right priorities, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Absolutely, ma’am. Quite so.’

Julian ushered Lord Cranleigh out of the room and we three corgis made our way back to the Queen.

Winston sidled up to me. ‘That wasn’t about you, by the way.’

‘No?’

‘Her Majesty is always well briefed about visitors.’

‘It sounded like it was about me.’ I was bewildered.

‘All in good time,’ he said, enigmatically. ‘Look sharp.’

Early that evening there was an award ceremony for The Prince’s Trust in the Waterloo Chamber – a room usually closed to the public, Margaret told me, as we accompanied Sophia from the Queen’s quarters to the chamber.

Sophia shared an office with the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, and helped arrange the charitable engagements of senior members of the royal family. While Tara, the epitome of English beauty, was always immaculately dressed with perfectly coiffed blonde hair and an aura of calm self-assurance, Sophia, a few years younger, was more vivacious and impulsive. Her dark good looks and high spirits livened up the atmosphere at the palace, and it was clear that the two women enjoyed a warm friendship.

There was something enigmatic about Tara, however, which Sophia saw as her job to resolve: the absence of a boyfriend. Despite being showered with invitations to social events every night of the week, apparently, for some reason, whenever Tara became involved with an eligible man, the relationship never lasted.

As soon as Sophia announced she was going to the Waterloo Chamber, Winston had sprung from where he’d been dozing beside her desk.

‘Winston is very keen on award ceremonies,’ I observed to Margaret as the two of us followed.

‘Not the ceremony. It’s what happens afterwards. Young ones always think they’re being very daring when they sneak canapés to the Queen’s corgis. Winston takes full advantage.’

The Waterloo Chamber was magnificent, a huge wood-panelled room with an ornate, vaulted ceiling, red-and-gold carpets and massive oil paintings in gilded frames. A steady stream of visitors were pouring in, young men awkward in suits and ties, and young women teetering on heels evidently bought especially for the occasion. Glancing about, they seemed overawed by the majesty of the place as they were guided towards rows of chairs.

For my own part, it was my first, public appearance as a Queen’s corgi – one for which I was entirely unprepared. From having been the very least important dog in a house of over twenty, and painfully aware of my inadequacies, suddenly I felt very special. There was a ripple of excitement as soon as people saw the three of us strutting across the carpet. Many smiled and pointed. Others tried to coax us to them. From being an outcast only the day before, about to be taken to the terrifying fate of whatever awaited me in the shed, suddenly I was a star! ‘We are Her Majesty’s representatives,’ Margaret had said. Now I understood exactly what she meant! The simple fact of our presence made people feel closer to the Queen herself, giving them the sense that she might step into the room at any moment.

I kept hard on the heels of Sophia and, along with Winston and Margaret, sat next to her in the front row of seats, near a small stage on which several council members of The Prince’s Trust faced the audience. They were, Margaret told me approvingly, all highly successful businessmen.

One of them, a bouncy looking man with a mane of silver hair, was soon opening proceedings by introducing, as a VIP guest, a leading expert on happiness.

‘Oh, spare us!’ snorted Winston. ‘A speaker.’

‘I’d like to congratulate every single one of you who is here this evening,’ began the visiting expert, a friendly-looking man with short, dark hair and glinting spectacles, who spoke with what I later discovered to be an Australian accent.

‘Each one of you has not only found your way out of unemployment, but you have completely turned your lives around. Tonight is a celebration of that achievement.’

Several Prince’s Trust committee members applauded enthusiastically.

‘What I’m here to talk about this evening is the more important question underlying what we all do. It’s a question each one of us has to answer in his or her own particular way. But there are some common threads. The question I am talking about is: how can we lead happy and purposeful lives?’

From the silence in the room, the speaker evidently had everyone’s attention.

‘The ancient Greeks didn’t have just one word for happiness, they had two: hedonia and eudemonia. It’s unfortunate that, in everyday English, we no longer make the same distinction because there’s an important difference. Hedonia is happiness we get when we take from the world. Chocolate. Parties. Stuff. It’s all coming from outside ourselves.

‘Eudemonia, on the other hand, is the happiness we get from what we give to the world. The concern we show for others when we offer our time, skills, support. It’s a different quality of happiness that comes from within.’

The VIP expert went on to talk about how the two kinds of happiness differ. How hedonia focuses on me and the pleasure I get. How the focus of eudemonia is on others, and the happiness we experience from helping them. How hedonia tends to be short-lived, and the more we experience it, the less it delivers. ‘The first slice of cake is one thing,’ he observed. ‘How about the second, the fifth, the tenth?’

At Sophia’s feet, Winston was fidgeting. ‘Amateur!’ he snuffled. ‘But I take his point.’

By contrast, the inner contentment of eudemonia is more enduring, the speaker noted. And that feeling is not diminished by repetition. If anything, the more we keep giving, the more profound our sense of well-being.

I found the visiting expert’s talk very interesting. Enlightening, even. I had never heard such ideas expressed in the time I’d been growing up in the Grimsley household. The lives of Mr and Mrs Grimsley, it was plain to see, were given over completely to hedonia. Hardly surprising, therefore, that they were often so miserable, and the only solace they seemed to find was an altered state of consciousness courtesy of the Crown.

‘Go for both!’ urged the speaker at his conclusion. ‘Enjoy the pleasures of this world, but don’t neglect your inner well-being. Don’t be seduced into believing that there’s some direct connection between the material world and your own feelings of contentment. If well-being is what you want – and it’s what we all want – paradoxically to achieve that you should try to focus on the well-being of others.’

Later that evening, we three corgis retired with the Queen and Philip to a private sitting room, where the royal couple were soon engrossed in books they had recently obtained from the City of Westminster’s traveling library. Our bellies were full – in Winston’s case, with a great many honey-and-mustard cocktail sausages. Coals glowed in the fireplace. A sense of peace pervaded the room. This was to become one of my favourite times in the circadian rhythm, with the activities of the day behind us and the Queen to ourselves.

Three baskets had been laid out to one side of the fireplace, two of them furnished with well-worn, tartan rugs, the third, newly installed for me. Following the example of the other corgis, I stepped into ‘my’ basket and lay down, trying to get comfortable. It was snug and protected, with just the right amount of cushioning. I could see both my fellow corgis and our human companions. The room was perfectly cosy. But something was lacking.

Getting out of my basket I made my way towards Winston’s. Watching me, I could tell he knew what I hoped for. As he showed no objection, I climbed in and curled up next to him.

The Queen and Phillip exchanged glances as I felt the warmth of his body next to mine. This was what I needed. The comfort of corgi.

‘Tell me, Winston, how did you get your name?’ I asked, sleepily.

‘Ah, dear boy, how we get our names.’ He sighed. ‘One single name can mean so many different things. There are outward meanings and inner, esoteric meanings …’

I thought he was going to leave me in a state of deep and continuing mystery but I really didn’t mind because he’d called me ‘dear boy’, and I was warm with the glow of acceptance. But from the basket next door, Margaret said, ‘We royal corgis are all named after national leaders. In Winston’s case, it was his courageous defence of Queen and country that gave him his name.’

‘Well,’ he said pensively, ‘that was part of it.’

‘Do tell!’ I urged him.

‘We were with Her Majesty on a beach near Balmoral,’ he told me, chest rising, ‘minding our own business and enjoying the weather. Suddenly two Rottweilers appeared from nowhere and raced towards us. I bared my teeth and went on the attack.’

‘Rottweilers?’ I couldn’t believe he’d take on two huge, powerful dogs with such fearsome reputations. ‘Did you see them off?’

‘Security stepped in,’ he said. ‘But I showed the Queen how far I’d go. I’d fight them on the beaches.’

In the basket next door, Margaret cleared her throat. ‘There’s that other story too,’ she said.

‘Another?’ I wondered if Winston had also pursued German Shepherds in the fields? Or bared his fangs at Dobermanns in the streets?

Margaret was quick to disillusion me. ‘He has a penchant for cigar stubs,’ she said.

‘A misunderstanding,’ insisted Winston. ‘I was trying to get to some pizza. One of the staff had dumped the contents of an ashtray on top of it.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Margaret sounded unconvinced.

‘And you, Margaret?’ I intervened, not wishing a pleasant moment to turn ugly. ‘How did you come to be named?’

‘For my constant vigilance in the service of the Queen,’ she replied snippily.

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ chortled Winston. ‘The real story is that she attacked a famous trade union leader at a garden party.’

‘Only a nip to the ankles.’

‘There was a lot of blood.’

‘Well, it was downright theft,’ she snapped. ‘He’d stuffed his overcoat pockets full of apple Danishes.’

There was a moment while I imagined the trade union leader, limping across the lawns of Buckingham Palace, his coat pockets filled with contraband pastries and socks drenched in blood. The Rottweilers halting in their tracks on the beach. Winston snuffling for pizza in the midst of burned-out cigars.

‘I wonder what I’ll end up being called,’ I mused.

It was a while before Winston answered. ‘These things aren’t usually rushed.’

‘Nor should they be,’ chimed Margaret.

Winston exhaled sleepily, while I closed my eyes, snuggling up closer.

‘Quite so,’ said he.

Dozing in our baskets, I reflected on all that had happened during that eventful day. The meeting with Lord Cranleigh that morning and what the Queen had told him. The psychologist that evening, and how he’d made the same distinction between outer and inner.

The more I mulled it over, the more it occurred to me how both of them seemed to be saying the same thing. The Queen used plain words, but I recognised now that when she’d said we shouldn’t confuse outward appearance with inner qualities because our well-being depended on it, she had been hinting at a much deeper truth. One with an importance going well beyond the floppy ear of a single corgi, but that most certainly included me too. Because it was thanks to the Queen’s understanding about the true cause of happiness that she had dispatched Tara to my rescue when she’d heard what I faced at the hands of Mr Grimsley. Tara’s neighbour’s daughter, having just been to The Crown, had repeated to Tara over the fence what she’d just heard Mr Grimsley saying. Tara, in turn, had told Her Majesty. Acting on her concern for others – in this case me – the Queen had been engaged in the pursuit of eudemonia.

Glancing up from the book she was reading, for a moment her eyes met mine – and she smiled. Curled next to Winston, I wagged my stump. It didn’t matter to the Queen that my ear was floppy, and so for the first time that I could ever remember, nor did it matter to me. Inner qualities, not outer appearances. If this was what well-being felt like, I pondered, I looked forward to enjoying more of it.

In the weeks that followed, I adjusted to my new life as a royal corgi. And my new homes. Palaces and castles with large rooms containing not a single corgi quickly began to seem the norm. I became familiar not only with the royal family, but with the household staff who attended them. It wasn’t long before I had been the Queen’s corgi for longer that I had been the Grimsleys’, and my unfortunate start in life began to recede to nothing more than an unhappy memory. Which, I thought, was where the Grimsleys would remain.

But, my fellow subject, I was mistaken.

One morning we three corgis were in the lady-in-waiting’s Buckingham Palace office, in a favourite sunspot on a sumptuous rug between the desks of Tara and Sophia. Tara was going through the day’s mail when she snorted in a most unladylike way.

‘Seriously?!’ she exclaimed, pushing back her chair, unable to resist stepping over to share a particular letter with Sophia. All three of us looked up as Sophia quickly scanned the letter.

‘Outrageous!’ she agreed, her gypsy eyes flashing.

Both ladies looked directly at me.

The letter was from Mrs Patricia Gwendolyn Grimsley. She had been watching TV news, and the coverage of a charity function, when she noticed that one of ‘her’ corgis had joined the royal household. She and her husband, loyal Kennel Club members, were pleased to see their dearest, all-time favourite puppy had been acquired by Her Majesty. How, they wished to know, should they apply for a Royal Warrant, now that they were established as purveyors of corgis to the Queen’s household?

‘Never wanted to hear from me again!’ Tara was indignant. ‘The nerve of the woman!’

‘Oh, you’ll have to reply,’ Sophia’s eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘Sign your letter “Lying Toerag, Her Majesty’s lady-in-waiting”.’

The two women burst out laughing.

‘Didn’t she make you promise never to say where you got him?’ asked Tara.

‘She did. Solemnly.’ Tara returned to her desk. ‘Which makes my decision easy.’

Leaning forward under her desk, she fed the letter into a shredder which whirred noisily.

‘The only royal treatment she deserves is a one-way trip to the Tower of London.’

‘The Queen can send people to the Tower?’ I turned to the other corgis, instantly sensing a reputation as sinister as the shed.

‘She can.’ Margaret’s eyes glowed with fervour.

‘But doesn’t,’ confirmed Winston.

Well, I thought, that’s what makes Her Majesty different from Mrs Grimsley.

It was not long after this that a very different item of correspondence arrived, one which Tara had no hesitation showing the Queen. It consisted of a single, but extraordinary photograph of an elephant silhouetted at sunset, and had been sent from Africa by Anthony Cranleigh, son of the lord. Along with the photograph was a short, handwritten note, which Tara read aloud as Her Majesty admired the photograph.

‘Your Majesty, I am quite sure this will never reach you, but I just wanted to write it anyway to express my heartfelt thanks. All through my teenage years I wanted to be a wildlife photographer, but my father kept insisting this wasn’t a ‘proper’ job, and that I should follow him into investment banking instead. Something you said to him recently made him change his mind. I don’t know what it was, but it has allowed me to follow my dream, for which I am truly grateful. I would like you to have this photograph from my first visit to Kenya.’

‘Very nice,’ said the Queen, gazing at the photograph.

Winston and I exchanged a glance.

‘So, that was what that whole thing was about? My floppy ear? Being guided by the right priorities?’

‘Look sharp,’ said he.

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