Liisa: a strange story

Liisa: a strange story

I'm sitting in a shop looking at some malas when a group of people comes in. Two women and one man. They ask to see some jewelley, one of the women sits down, browsing the ware on the counter. 

Something makes me look up, and ask: You must be from somewhere in Scandinavia, right? She turns to me, with a smile of slight wonder on her face, and says: Yes, actually, we are from Finland. 

I smile back at her and suddenly, the strangest thing: I'm focussing on her eyes, which are bright blue and have an expression of childish awe and wonderment in them. My focus broadens, and it seems as if the rest of her is gradually building up around those eyes. 

A face lined with age but still with such gentleness and sweetness as to take your breath away. Long luxurious hair, wavy and streaked with grey, hands tanned and gnarled with old age, a spectacular sparkling yellow stone on her finger. To my utter amazement I realise that I know this woman. "Liisa," I say. "Liisa L ."

She looks at me with an almost blank expression. Then she realises who I am, it's coming back to her. She had a little Tibetan Buddhist shop in downtown Helsinki, and I used to spend many happy hours there, talking and feeling so much at home. It's safe to say that she's one of the sweetest persons I have ever had the privilege to meet. And now, after 10 years, we meet here in India like that! What are the odds of something like this happening? 

We agree to get together the next day and as we meet, I immediately get to the point. She used to be Tibetan Buddhist, right? So how come she's here in this town where Westerners (except myself!) usually come to get a darshan with this Great Guru? 

This is what she told me:

When she was a young woman, she was living in a very unhappy marriage. Her husband was a quiet man but quite partial to drink and when he did get into the bottle, it was hard for him to get out again. She felt trapped as they had two children and she didn't have enough money to leave. 

Then, one day, a friend passed by her house and said: Look, Liisa, I think you should come to India with us. There's a big group of people going and when there, we are getting a bus and just driving around, visiting every holy place and meeting every holy man we can find. 

Right there and then she decided that she would go, no matter what, she had to do it. She had had a habit of buying books every time her paycheck came in (she was an elementary school teacher) and by that time, her collection was already considerable. So she called a second-hand bookstore and they came and bought all her books. In order to move this load, they had to bring a truck! 

So now she had the money for her trip to India. She arranged for a babysitter and off she went, knowing that something, a solution must be waiting for her in that faraway land. Curiously enough, her husband, who usually showed no emotion, except when drunken, was now pleading with her not to go and promising to reform himself if she only would stay home. But Liisa did not yield to his pleas. 

The trip to India was everything she had hoped for. For a month, they cruised the country, stopping at historical sites, visiting temples and getting darshans from gurus. The last stop would be the very same little town. 

This town is famous for a great guru who, back in the 70ies when Liisa visited, was only beginning to gather fame. Liisa was sceptical, she had no great love for the guru business, all this kow-towing, alleged miracles, what not. 

But when they finally got there, she felt as if that was the place she was meant to be. Her heart filled with peace, she plopped down in the dust and thought: I'm not moving from this place. They'll have to drag me out first. The rest of the group went to raid the shops for saris as the guru was rumoured to be very conservative when it came to ladies' dressing code. Liisa remained seated in the darshan area. By and by, people started coming back and soon it was darshan time. The guru appeared. 

What happened next is in Liisa's words. "As soon as I saw him, my heart filled with indescribable love, my eyes were brimming over with tears. I sprang up and as if carried by some force greater than myself, I moved towards him. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself on the ground, prostrating myself before him and trying to kiss his feet. 

At the same time a part of my consciousness was witnessing the scene, horrified. I'm not the kind of person to demonastrate emotion like that, I was mortified of what my friends would think of it all. I felt I would have to stay in that position because, for sure, I wouldn't have the nerve to face anybody after shaming myself like that! 

The guru gently put his hand on top of my head, then under my chin and forced me to look up. So, he said. You are the one who doesn't believe in miracles? Look, he said. And suddenly his palm filled with holy ash, vibhuti. Eat it up, he ordered. I licked, and it was sweet. 

Now, said the guru. What do you want?

Sobbing, I repeated just one sentence, over and over again: Please, heal my husband.

He looked at me and asked: Just this? But surely, you must want something for yourself, too?

No, no, I said, if you could just make him well, that's enough for me.

All right, the guru said, so be it." 

After that, there's really not much left to tell. Regardless of what Liisa felt in the beginning about not wanting to leave, she now didn't have a problem with that. She felt that she had found the thing she had come for. 

The hole that she had carried in her heart had been healed and filled with this wonderful guru. The father he had lost in war when she was a child, the emotional cripple of a husband, the god she had never believed in - for her, the guru took the place of all that. 

She stepped out of the plane in Helsinki, a different woman. Before, she almost always dressed in black, wanting to shield herself from the rest of the world. Now she was wearing a bright yellow dress, with bare feet and flowers is her hair. She had been set free.

When she reached home, her husband had some news for her. He was to go on a business trip to Tallinn (which incidentally is my home town, across the Gulf of Finland, and Helsinki where Liisa was living) the very next day. So, he packed his bags and went. Liisa spent the day at home with the children. 

The next morning the telephone rang. It was from her husband's office. They informed her, that sadly, her husband had been found dead in his hotel room in Tallinn. While they were filling her in for details, she could only think of the guru and her wish. So he had done what he promised, he had taken him, she thought, not knowing whether to be glad or to feel guilty. 

What was even more interesting about all of this was that her husband had been found, fully dressed, in the bathtub of his hotel room. There was no obvious reason why he should have died, as confirmed by the coroner. A post mortem was carried out and repeated in Helsinki, and the result was still inconclusive. 

Still numb with it all, Liisa collected a considerable amount in insurance money, immediately sold her apartment in Helsinki and bought a farm house nearby. A place away from city life, a place where she could have animals and where the children could run free.

A little while after that, she accidentally met a Tibetan Buddhist who had a propsal for her. Liisa, as you now have this place in the country, wouldn't you want to occasionally rent it out to us for yoga classes, meditation courses and such, he asked. Needless to say, Liisa agreed. 

She was soon able to quit her day job and throw herself fully into this exiting new world of spirituality. She studied yoga and become an instructor herself, and after a some years they pooled their resources and opened a Tibetan Buddhist shop-cum-center in Helsinki. After that, she travelled to Nepal on a yearly basis, held classes in Buddhist philosophy etc. Her children grew up, married happily and had children of their own. 

As for Liisa ... through all of this, she has remained the same: the gentle, unassuming, humble and incredibly beautiful woman whose life, in a curious way, had been turned around back then in India.

She's an old age pensioner now and free to come to this town every year. The guru is still alive, and she usually spends three months here to be near him.

She says that here, she feels happy, calm and content and that everything is just as it's supposed to be. 

And seeing her shining and carefree face, I feel happy for her.

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I guess a disclaimer is in order here: the author - that's me - does not have a positive or negative opinion on any of this. I myself wouldn't want a guru, though.

But ... in India, things are different than in a Western country. Strange things do happen there on a daily basis, people don't even pay much attention to this. It is as if the mindset of people, who believe that miracles are possible, facilitates the manifestation of thought into reality. My Tibetan friend once lauged and said: You Westerners ... you want miracles. You are so hung up on them but where I come from, what you call miracles ARE the ordinary reality.

So when in India, I take this in account, and do not scoff on such "superstition".