Tales of the miraculous have at all times encircled the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.
The story of its 1950 founding goes that the non secular guru Paramahansa Yogananda bought the 10-acre Pacific Palisades property from an oil firm president, after the oilman had a vivid dream wherein his land turned a “church of all religions.” Yogananda then established the grounds as a spot of peace, solace and sanctuary for folks of all faiths.
Swans on the lake on the Self-Realization Fellowship web site.
(Self-Realization Fellowship)
The spring-fed lake within the heart of the compound is its defining characteristic. Swans glide throughout its floor, new moms push strollers round its perimeter, and other people of many religions and backgrounds meditate quietly alongside its shores.
The lake additionally performed a key position within the shrine’s unlikely escape from the Palisades fireplace, as a household of three devotees used its waters to extinguish threatening flames.
Self-Realization Fellowship president and non secular chief Brother Chidananda, in a livestream handle to the group’s worldwide membership, recounted the efforts of Billy Asad and his two grownup youngsters, Gabriella and Nicky, who got here to the property’s rescue.
The Asads, he mentioned, had been “the divine devices of God and guru who actually saved the Lake Shrine.”
It was the soot-covered swans, so darkish they virtually seemed black, that first struck Gabriella Asad when she arrived on the Lake Shrine on the second day of the hearth. Then, the dearth of different animal life. No koi fish rose to the floor to greet her. The turtles that often solar themselves on the scattered rocks had been gone.
The Self-Realization Fellowship’s lush Pacific Palisades grounds embody a historic houseboat, the place guru Paramahansa Yogananda lived and wrote whereas directing the work across the Lake Shrine.
(Self-Realization Fellowship )
Wanting across the smoldering grounds the place she was baptized as a child and now volunteers within the gardening division, Gabriella, 20, resisted the urge to fall to her knees in despair. As an alternative, she grabbed 4 fireplace extinguishers and, by means of her tears, set to work alongside her father, Billy, 54, and brother Nicky, 19.
As embers the scale of golf balls pelted the property, she put out spot fires and hosed down the wood-shingled roofs of the Lake Shrine’s historic buildings.
“Simply the way in which the sky was, all of the smoke, the way in which the swans had been coated,” she mentioned with emotion in her voice. “It took all the things in me to do the perfect I may.”
Her father, a former yoga instructor who lives on a houseboat in Marina Del Rey, had been monitoring the explosive Palisades fireplace since quickly after it broke out the morning of Jan. 7, when a monk noticed flames within the close by mountains. As a longtime member of the Self-Realization Fellowship, Billy knew what was at stake: the plush meditation gardens open to all, the historic houseboat the place his guru lived and wrote whereas directing the work across the Lake Shrine, the thousand-year-old Chinese language sarcophagus containing a few of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes.
“It’s not simply this stunning backyard with a lake,” Billy mentioned. “It’s a vortex of sunshine and love and peace and concord and therapeutic.”
Billy is just not a licensed firefighter, however because the founder and proprietor of WDA Hearth Safety, he helps get companies and houses fire-ready. He’s additionally a licensed Regulation 4 tester below the Los Angeles Hearth Division, which permits him to examine and assess fireplace doorways in L.A., and he’s licensed below the Workplace of the State Hearth Marshal to service and check moveable fireplace extinguishers. His father was a firefighter for 30 years and taught him about fireplace habits. Over time, Billy handed his data on to his youngsters.
He started visiting the Lake Shrine’s paradisiacal grounds 25 years in the past after a good friend gave him a replica of Yogananda’s seminal guide, “Autobiography of a Yogi.” He nonetheless remembers strolling onto the property for the primary time.
Billy Asad, left, with daughter Gabriella and son Nicky.
(Billy Asad)
“It was that ah-ha second,” he mentioned. “I knew it was my path.”
His youngsters had been baptized within the Windmill Chapel, which abuts the lake and appears as if it had been magically transported from the Netherlands.
Gabriella and Nicky attended Sunday faculty on the temple and went on teen retreats with different Self-Realization Fellowship members. As they obtained older, they turned regulars on the hourlong companies held on the property every week. Nicky used to work as a chef on the Lake Shrine, cooking for the monks and lay folks on the retreat heart. Gabriella volunteers with the gardening division.
Billy Asad hoses down the hillside on the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine, the place morning companies are held each Sunday.
(Billy Asad)
“Ever since I can keep in mind we’ve been going to Lake Shrine,” Nicky mentioned. “It’s our dwelling. It’s all the things to us.”
By 10 a.m. on Jan. 8, Billy had tracked the fires lengthy sufficient to know the Lake Shrine was in peril. Together with Gabriella and Nicky, he loaded his Toyota Tacoma TRD Professional with helmets, gloves, fireplace coats, eye safety, steel-toed boots, respirators, radios, axes, shovels and about 30 fireplace extinguishers. Then they headed north to the property.
Flames raged round them as they climbed into Pacific Palisades. Phone poles crashed to the bottom close to the truck. There have been checkpoints alongside the way in which, however Billy confirmed his fireplace credentials and was allowed to move by means of.
Once they arrived, the Lake Shrine had been deserted, the 14 monks who reside on the grounds safely evacuated. There was a firetruck within the car parking zone, however the two firefighters there have been centered on a three-story condo constructing adjoining to the Lake Shrine that was consumed by flames.
Transferring rapidly and coordinating by means of their radios, the Asads rushed to extinguish spot fires crackling on the base of timber, in a patch of bamboo and on the various railroad ties that function stairs all through the property.
“That’s precisely how all the things begins,” Billy mentioned. “A tree falls and catches one other construction on fireplace.”
To forestall future ignitions, in addition they set to work wetting the roofs of all of the buildings. Due to her volunteer job, Gabriella knew the place the backyard hoses had been positioned, though just a few had already melted. She took care of the customer heart. Nicky was charged with soaking the place of his baptism, the Windmill Chapel.
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In the meantime, Billy noticed an sudden device: a gas-powered water pump on the lake’s small upkeep barge. It was new to him, however that didn’t matter.
“I do know fireplace pumps,” he mentioned. “I do know hoses. I do know attachments. So inside 5 minutes after seeing it, I had the engine began and we had been spraying bamboo on fireplace from 100 toes away.”
Because it occurs, just a few months earlier, a resident monk of the property, Brother Bodhananda, had bought the pump in case of future fires. Earlier than being evacuated, he introduced the pump out of storage and moved it onto the barge.
“It’s a credit score to him and the upkeep supervisor, Invoice Lackner, who works there that they’d the momentary fireplace pump arrange,” Billy mentioned. “We jumped on the barge and instantly began utilizing it. I’ve boating expertise and my son does too. It was all a part of this superb divine plan.”
The Asad household labored for seven hours earlier than pausing, together with taking a second to softly rinse a number of the soot clinging to the swans’ feathers.
That night, Nicky and Billy got here again and stayed till 4 a.m. the subsequent day, hosing down the property and persevering with to extinguish spot fires that had been igniting throughout, generally repeatedly in the identical place. It was blindingly exhausting work, and so they consider it was the prayers and desires of devotees throughout the globe who empowered them to do it.
The Lake Shrine towers had been in danger because the Palisades fireplace raged on the hillside final week.
(Nicky Asad)
For the subsequent three days they stored returning till the hearth hazard had handed. Even now, because the preliminary fireplace risk has ended, they proceed to patrol the grounds every day.
On Sunday in his livestream, Chidananda shared the outcomes of the Asads’ work. The Gandhi World Peace Memorial is unhurt even because the vegetation on the hillside behind it’s gone. The houseboat is secure, as is the Windmill Chapel, the place weddings, christenings and memorials are held.
The Court docket of Religions, the place small monuments to every of the world’s main faiths welcomes guests to the grounds, is undamaged. The towering pillars and crossbars of the Golden Lotus Temple had been hosed down by the Asads and are as soon as once more gleaming white.
There have been, nevertheless, some structural losses. The guests’ restroom close to the property’s entrance, for one. Whilst, simply 20 toes away, the Lake Shrine museum and bookshop with artifacts from Yogananda’s life nonetheless stands.
The residing quarters of the 14 monks who reside on the property additionally took successful. An ashram the place half of them lived sustained slight injury to 1 window. The Outdated Santa Ynez Inn, which housed the opposite seven monks, burned down, taking with it the workplace and condo of the Lake Shrine’s non secular director, Satyananda.
“I’m an unhoused evacuee, however I’m doing fairly nicely,” Satyananda mentioned. “We adapt and transfer ahead.”
One of many few constructions misplaced on the property was the guests’ lavatory.
(Self-Realization Fellowship)
Witnessing what passed off on the Lake Shrine was a non secular expertise, Chidananda informed fellowship members in his handle, however he added that he doesn’t plan to speak about it way more.
“ why,” he mentioned, smiling gently. “As a result of it’s too simple to grow to be proud or smug, or really feel that we’re higher than others who didn’t fare as nicely. Our guru would have abhorred any sense of superiority advanced primarily based on the truth that we had been spared whereas others suffered. That’s fully reverse to the spirit of his life.”
As an alternative, he mentioned, the non secular group’s consciousness ought to revolve round one query: What can we do to assist?
He’s already requested fellowship communities in Southern California to prepare meals and clothes drives, whereas monks and nuns on the group’s heart in Mount Washington are providing non secular counseling over the cellphone.
Due to the Asads, the Lake Shrine group will even proceed to supply an open, inclusive and exquisite house for anybody looking for a quiet sanctuary for non secular reflection, renewal or meditation — simply as quickly because it’s ready.
“To me, the survival of this beloved shrine means a lot due to what it represents,” Chidananda mentioned. “It represents our religion that non secular life, the next consciousness of affection and unity and concord, will be capable to endure on this world, regardless of all opposite forces of maya [illusion], delusion and destruction.”
The property stays closed to the general public for now, however Billy mentioned he’s already welcomed just a few firefighters and law enforcement officials to take their breaks on the Lake Shrine grounds.
“They stroll across the lake and take a break from the chaos,” he mentioned. “And also you’d simply see it of their eyes: ‘What is that this place?’ ‘We had no clue this was right here.’ ‘We’re coming again.’”
The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine property stays closed to the general public for now.
(Self-Realization Fellowship )
In the meantime, Gabriella is relieved to see that the swans are again to their snow white shade. The turtles have began sunning themselves once more.
