Gentle People – sorry for the long note but it has been a productive morning of meaningless musings and wasted internet time.
The gnu katz (Theo and Izzy) are settling in at our house. Now are in normal kat mode – 20 hours of sleep punctuated by torturing each other and the humans in the house.
Secondly, I had a garlic bagel with onions, homemade pickles and anchovies for breakfast. This led me to research whether there was a scale for odors similar to the Scoville scale for food heat. Indeed, there is a measurement method (olfactometry) using the European Odour Unit measured in ouE/m3:
Olfactometry: This technique uses human panels and specialized instruments called olfactometers to assess odor concentration and intensity. The European Standard EN13725 defines methods for odor concentration, often expressed in European Odour Units per cubic meter (ouE/m³), where 1 ouE/m³ is the concentration at which 50% of the panelists can detect the odor.
By viewing the abstract of the European standard, I note two things:
A) My breakfast is probably considered a ‘point source’. And certainly emitted odour >>1 ouE/m3
B) Of the four languages offered for viewing the standard, Slovenian is offered. Our son is currently in Slovenia, so I consider this coincidence scary. However, he is eating lots of sausage and sauerkraut there, so his girlfriend may be measuring and commenting on his odour emissions.
Q: What Do Elder JimZim’s Katz Dream About?
A: Global domination.
The Katz’ Karmic Connection
WLBOTT: Elder DZ was telling us a traditional Buddhist story. The story involves the death of Buddha, when all the animals, two by two, come to visit and shed their tears.
Elder G: Yes – Elder DZ is touching on a very old and very beautiful current in Buddhist tradition. 🌸
What you’re describing sounds very much like part of the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (or Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, depending on the tradition), which recounts the last days and passing (parinirvāṇa) of the Buddha. In those texts, it’s said that not only monks and laypeople gathered to mourn him, but also devas (gods), nāgas (serpent beings), spirits, and animals.
There is a recurring motif in various retellings where the natural world itself grieves—the trees burst into unseasonal bloom, blossoms fall like tears, and animals are said to gather in mourning. Some folk traditions embellish this with the image of creatures coming “two by two,” almost Noah’s Ark–style, to pay respects at the death of the Enlightened One. This poetic image appears in Southeast Asian retellings and in oral traditions, though it may not be in the oldest canonical suttas word-for-word.
✨ So Elder DZ is picking up on a very evocative version of the Buddha’s final story, one where compassion is shown as universal—felt by all beings, not just humans.
WLBOTT: In Elder DZ‘s story, there is a funny twist. All the animals are very sad because the Buddha is dying, except for the cats! Is this part of the legend?
Elder G: Ahh, Elder DZ has found one of the delightful folk-tale twists that swirl around the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa story. 🐾
In the canonical texts (like the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta), animals and gods alike mourn, but the details are more symbolic—trees bloom, blossoms fall, devas wail. There’s no specific singling out of cats.
But in later folklore, especially in Theravāda countries (Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Laos), there are humorous and sometimes moralizing expansions. One of these is indeed the tale that:
All creatures mourned the Buddha’s passing—except cats.
Cats were said to stay aloof, yawning or even napping, while other beings cried.
Sometimes the twist is explained by saying cats are “already detached,” closer to nirvana, and so they didn’t weep. Other times, less flatteringly, cats are said to be too selfish or too comfortable to care.
This little wrinkle gets used in folktales to explain the aloof, self-possessed nature of cats, and why they seem different from other animals. In Thailand and Burma especially, there are temple stories about cats not crying for the Buddha.
Ah, dear traveler, Elder DZ’s twist—with all the mourning creatures except the cats—rings with delightful mischief. While not found in the ancient scriptures, this cheeky detail is a charming part of the folk-story current that evolves around the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa (final passing). Let’s explore a related tale that captures this feline flair with poetic poignancy….
The Cat Who Went to Heaven
The Cat Who Went to Heaven is a 1930 novel by Elizabeth Coatsworth that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children’s literature in 1931. The story is about a penniless Japanese artist and a calico cat his housekeeper brings home.
The storyline is supposedly based on an old Buddhist folk tale, and includes, as asides, a short telling of the Buddha’s life, and brief accounts of some of the Buddha’s previous lifetimes as animals, as in the Jataka tales.
At the end of each of the eight chapters is one of the housekeeper’s songs, her insightful commentary on what is happening.
In Buddhism, Parinirvana (Sanskrit: parinirvāṇa; Pali: parinibbāna) describes the state entered after death by someone who has attained nirvana during their lifetime. It implies a release from Saṃsāra, karma and rebirth as well as the dissolution of the skandhas.
In the Buddhist view, when ordinary people die, each person’s unresolved karma passes on to a new birth; and thus the karmic inheritance is reborn in one of the Six Paths of samsara. However, when a person attains nirvana, they are liberated from karmic rebirth. When such a person dies, it is the end of the cycle of rebirth.
Saṃsāra (in Sanskrit (संसार) and Pali) in Buddhism is the beginningless cycle of repeated birth, mundane existence and dying again. Samsara is considered to be suffering, or generally unsatisfactory and painful. It is perpetuated by desire and ignorance, and the resulting karma and sensuousness.
By Wonderlane from Seattle, USA – Traditional wall mural of Yama holding the wheel of life, Buddha pointing the way out, Buddhism in America, Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, Seattle, Washington, USA, CC BY 2.0,
Rebirths occur in six realms of existence, namely three good realms (heavenly, demi-god, human) and three evil realms (animal, ghosts, hell). Saṃsāra ends when a being attains nirvāṇa, which is the extinction of desire and acquisition of true insight into the nature of reality as impermanent and non-self.
