“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”
— Eckhart Tolle

The over-application of the term Zen to describe everything from interior designs, gardens, supposedly Zen-inspired restaurant menus pored over by celebrities and fashionistas, even expressions like “a Zen moment,” can be tiresome. With a huge feline boom in Japan, a look at the connection between the supposed affinity between felines and Zen may be timely, especially if you are an owner spellbound by the character and nature of your beloved cat.

Cats are believed to have been introduced into Japan during the Nara period (710–794) via Kentoshi, Japanese envoys returning from Tang China. One cat of note was a black creature brought back from China in the eighth century by the priest Ganjin, the feline respectfully installed in a repository at Todai-ji Temple in Nara. It was a simple connection to make between employing cats to protect sutras and other precious scriptures from rodents, to seeing black cats in particular, as auspicious animals capable of offering spiritual protection. Housed at shrines, cats became objects of worship. Neko omamori (cat talisman), symbols of good fortune, were also sold at temples. Some religious establishments continue to do a brisk trade in charms, wood carvings of felines, and cat-themed votive pictures. The link between cats, Buddhist temples, good fortune, and even the dark forces of the supernatural underworld, does not necessarily presume a link to Zen, but there are parallels between the principles and aspirations of the Zen practitioner and cat behavior. A significant difference, however, is that Zen followers can spend a lifetime striving to attain its ideals, while cats seem naturally endowed with them. Cats don’t struggle, for example, to achieve seijaku, a Japanese word referring to the profound stillness and silence in nature and the mind, one of the goals of Zen. The 14th-century Zen roshi, poet and garden designer, Soseki Muso, wrote of the long road to experiencing Original Silence. Cats got there first. Stillness, silence, the composed mind are innate states.

Cats are said to release higher than usual amounts of alpha brainwaves. Associated with a relaxed state of mind, alpha waves are often detectable when a cat is dozing. Humans emit the same waves, but cats appear to be better at summoning them. They are often erroneously described as selfish, but the truth is they are just being themselves in the most selfless way they know.

Cats teach us how to live in the present, how to slow down. Although their moods can change at lightning speed, cats are, when they choose, masters of inactivity, embodying the Taoist idea of wu-wei, translated as effortless action. Living in the eternal present, cats do not experience time in the same way that we do. In their company we learn to decompress, to tear ourselves away from our computer screens and look outside the window.

It might be a stretch, but a cat’s mindful inertia has often been compared to the state we experience when practicing transcendental meditation. If it’s simply a question of being in the here and now, then cats exemplify this much sought-after state. They certainly have the perfect posture for za-zen, or seated meditation. They are acutely mindful of their surroundings; you won’t find a calmer or more composed animal. They provide lessons in a degree of silence we are not accustomed to. Living with Q, his ears and head hot-wired to pick up the slightest sound or vibration, I realize, clumsily clattering around the house and kitchen, how noisy I am, how easy it is to disturb his carefully composed air currents.

Cats don’t live for the moment; they live in the moment. Dwelling neither in the past or future, their minds are a lot less cluttered than ours. As a cat owner, I sometimes wonder if their habit of pushing things off shelves is less play, more tidying up? Cats are highly mindful of their surroundings. They may appear calm, even zonked out by sleep, but a part of their mind is always on full alert. Witness the way a snoozing cat will spring into action if it hears the sound of a bird, scuttling mouse, or movement of a gecko, as its padded feet cross the wall.

We can no longer understand the interior life of a cat than we can grasp another person’s most private thoughts. We do know that their senses are sharper, their minds never clouded or addled by fantasies or impossible yearnings. Their detachment from the self, of an obsessive self-imaging, their single-mindedness, suggests their experiences are more intense than ours. The Zen condition of ‘no-mind’ may correlate with a cat’s state of selflessness.

Cats are good at letting go of things, at attaining a Zen-like state of detachment, something we struggle to achieve for any significant duration of time. Without a strong desire for a large number of possessions, cats may be the ultimate minimalists. Content with the hand they are dealt, the anxiety and disquiet that characterize the human condition is largely unknown to cats, except those threatened or suffering deprivation. The extinction of the ego, an exalted goal of Zen, hardly applies to cats, who embody the oxymoron of being egoists, that is, self-centered creatures, without exhibiting vanity, without, in fact, possessing anything akin to an ego. Cats are comfortable in their own skin. They don’t aspire to be a different kind of cat or an entirely different kind of animal. They do not yearn or pine for a life they might have had, opting to live fully and appreciatively in the one given them. Surely there is a lesson there for us.

Matching a cat’s rapid reflexes, its limber physique, is their mental acuity, an ability to focus and balance the senses. It’s little wonder yoga practitioners often feel affiliation with cats. As the philosopher, John Gray put it, “Instead of being a sign of their inferiority, the lack of abstract thinking among cats is a mark of their freedom of mind.” Sitting perfectly erect, motionless, but fully alert, cats can achieve a state of being and poise the Zen devotee spends years trying to attain. Cats are often viewed as smug and self-satisfied. Self-possessed, comfortable with themselves, this might better be understood as a natural form of mindfulness. Cats do not have a strong image of themselves, one that they endlessly analyze and obsess over as we do. Driven by self-preservation and the pursuit of wellbeing in the present, an absence of ego is replaced by a concern to stay in good shape, to maintain a healthy physique, to eat and sleep regularly.

Intelligent, alert, for the most part silent, cats exude an aura of wisdom, which may be imagined, a case of wish fulfillment on our part, but I’m convinced cats have a rich inner life, perhaps even a spiritual one. But are cats, as some people have claimed, capable of being psychic companions? The fact that they are more introspective than dogs and other pets makes them more difficult to read. Cats don’t have thought bubbles pasted next to them, so we have to use our imagination, be extra sensitive, to intuit what they are thinking.

Part of being human, is enduring a state of torment, agonizing over our very existence. Having appointed ourselves supreme among all living creatures, keepers of the high moral ground of an ethical system of our own devising, we subject ourselves to impossibly high, often ambivalent standards, adversely comparing ourselves with other people, a behavioral flaw that, ultimately, makes us unhappy. To quote again from British philosopher John Gray, “While cats have nothing to learn from us, we can learn from them how to lighten the load that comes with being human.” If Man is a creature that has fallen from grace, cats, in their original innocence, are nothing short of saints. Or, you might say, Bodhisattvas, pending, or future Buddhas.

In old Chinese teachings, cats were viewed as guardians of the home, watching over thresholds and quiet spaces, staying close to those in need of balance and harmony. Being in the company of cats gives us a deep sense of calm and quietude, their presence creating a stillness not dissimilar to the state of comity Zen practitioners aspire to. The words of an anonymous ninth-century Irish monk still resonate: 

Alone together, scholar and cat
Each has his own work to do daily.
For you it is hunting, for me study.

Fully engaged in their own pursuits, neither cat nor scholar hinders the other.

Working at my desk in our book lined study, with its earth-colored walls and dark red, cherry wood floor, our cat Q, is curled up beside the window in a mellow pool of early autumn sunlight. In this fleeting state of companionable silence, we are both, you might say, contentedly living in the moment.