But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. — George Eliot, Middlemarch
Every day, when the weather allows, and even when it doesn’t, I walk up the road toward the monastery at the end of our valley. There is a mani wall there—whitewashed stone upon stone carved with prayers, inlayed with slate carvings—and I walk around it slowly, as one does, sometimes listening to music, sometimes to a podcast, sometimes repeating a mantra, and sometimes simply drifting inside my own thoughts. Walking like this has become a kind of informal practice for me, not quite meditation and not quite distraction, but something in between, where the mind loosens and the heart, if one is lucky, becomes permeable.
Between the monastery and the mani wall live four stray dogs. Or lived. They are fed, loosely and intermittently, by the monks—rice mostly, dotted with chilies—and by the people who live nearby, the old lama’s cook, some of the devotees. It is not abundance, but it is something. I supplement and I keep a bag of Pedigree dry dog food in my car, and sometimes better things too: dried chicken from Thailand, which they lose their minds over; stale bread, which they like. Over time, this small act became part of my walk, as common as putting on my shoes.
One of the dogs was white. He arrived a couple of years ago—thin, filthy, he had clearly known hunger in his young life. The others accepted him and so did I. He became the alpha, a greedy thief at feeding time, but also terribly sweet. I called him Mr. White, which now sounds absurd, but that’s how these relationships grow—not through intention, but through chance and repetition. The others are Grumpy (an old black lady), Shy Boy, and Lucky. Lucky already had her name as she belongs to a family who lives above the monastery. I’m not sure how lucky she is.
One recent Sunday, I noticed only three dogs curled up in the tall grass, waiting as I crested the hill. Mr. White was nowhere near the others, which was unusual. I felt a pang of dread. I’ve lived here a long time and have known many stray dogs. Most have tough, not long lives. People drive too fast up and down the monastery road. And if you don’t belong to somebody, you’re at a grave disadvantage.
I fed the three and continued down toward the mani wall. And there he was, lying on his side just a short distance from the wall—really only about a meter from where four people were doing kora. I tried to wake him. I put chicken beneath his nose. Nothing. He was breathing, but something in his breathing was distressed.
I did what people do when they think they can fix something—panic, reach for the phone, call names into the air. No one answered their phone. I called Dr. Jambay the veterinarian, the head of the animal rescue organization, my husband Namgay. I couldn’t see the phone clearly through my tears. I dialed wrong numbers. A young woman passed by, walking kora around the mani wall, her prayer beads moving rhythmically through her fingers. I called out to her, first in English then in Dzongkha, asking, please, for help to lift the dog into my car.
She stopped. She looked at me. She looked at the dog. And then she continued walking.
At the time, I felt something sharp and righteous rise up within me. I shouted an obscenity and said, ”That’s right! You just keep walking!”
I judged. I assigned meaning.
I decided that I knew exactly what her actions said about her heart, her faith, her prayers. I was certain that I was right and she was wrong, evil maybe, and that certainty burned hot, along with the devastation that this creature I knew was suffering.
But certainty, Buddhism teaches, is almost always the problem.
The truth is, I don’t know what she saw. I don’t know what rules she was following, or what fears or habits she had. I don’t know what karma was ripening in that moment for her or for me or for any of the three other people who were walking around the mani wall. What I know is that my own agitation, my crying and shouting, was making the moment smaller, not larger. I wasn’t helping.
I looked down at Mr. White and it came over me all at once: he was already letting go. He was dying.
When I realized Mr. White was leaving quickly, I put my phone away. I knelt down beside him and placed my hand on his side, on the coarse, dirty fur that rose and fell with each slow breath. I spoke to him softly, as though nothing extraordinary was happening, as though this was just another bright sunny winter morning and I’d come to feed him. He knew my voice. I was Food Lady. I told him it was all right. I told him he didn’t need to struggle. I told him he was a good boy. These words may have been for me as much as for him, but they were sincere.
He opened his eyes. They were cloudy; already looking somewhere else. Then after a few moments his breathing stopped.
In Buddhism, we are taught that intention matters. But we are also taught that action matters, and that presence matters most of all. Whatever merit is or is not accrued by walking around a wall reciting prayers, I know this: in that moment, kneeling beside a dying being and offering steadiness instead of fear or anger felt like the only practice available to me.
Later, I walked to the monastery and flagged down two monks who very kindly went back to the mani wall with me and helped me carry his body into the tall grass and cover him. We walked back to the monastery and one of them brought me into a temple room glowing with an enormous, gold statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, gazing down with that expression that seems to contain everything and nothing. The monk handed me a lit incense stick and I lit a butter lamp with it. “Pray for him,” the monk said.
Of course I did. I prayed not from doctrine but from longing. I prayed that he would be free from hunger and fear in his next life, and I prayed that his next life would be gentler. People here say a dog’s next rebirth is human. I found myself hesitating at that—thinking of all the ways humans fail—but then I prayed that he would return as a human who cares for all beings, who notices, and who stops for dogs who are dying.
And maybe that is the point that keeps circling back to me, like the kora itself, maybe haunting me a bit: not whether prayers are sincere or performative; not whether merit can be measured or revoked; but whether, when confronted with suffering directly in front of us, we have the wherewithal, the courage, the inclination, the time, the energy to pause long enough to respond with care. I always want this.
George Eliot reminds us that the growing good of the world depends on unhistoric, infinitesimal acts, on lives lived faithfully and quietly. No one will remember Mr. White. No one will remember me kneeling beside him. And yet something mattered there—not in a cosmic ledger, but in the simple fact that a living being did not die alone.
In the end, what matters is not what we believe, nor even what we intend, but how we treat one another, how we treat the least of us when no one is watching, when there is nothing to gain—when an animal is dirty and alone, when the moment asks only for our presence.
Related features from BDG
A New Chapter for Buddhist Nuns
Buddha in a Teacup: Notes from a Non-Capitalist Life in Bhutan
Buddha in a Teacup: Metaphors
