Waters Of Tranquility

The Lake Shrine Affords a Respite from the Storms of Life

By Carolyn See
Photographs by Todd Masinter

Writer Carolyn See pauses to reflect at the Lake Shrine of the Self-Realization Fellowship.

t's miniature, it's a play toy, it's childlike, it's deceiving, it's very beautiful. The Lake Shrine of the Self-Realization Fellowship hides behind hedges on Sunset Boulevard about half a mile up from the beach. It's been there for 50 years, since an immensely engaging yogi named Paramahansa Yogananda got the idea and put the place together as a shrine to world peace.

There's a lake with a flock of mud hens and swans and some overweight and self-indulgent Chinese carp. A rowboat and, moored to the shore, a two-story houseboat painted spanking white. Around the lake, a gravel path, and up on every side of the path, the most eccentric gardens possible.

The only thing there is to do is walk around that lake ... and around it again ... and around it again. Eating or sunbathing or raucous frolicking aren't allowed, although weddings are all right. You see them taking place every once in a while on the patch of lawn in front of the Gandhi World Peace Memorial, or hear snatches of ceremonies floating out in the air from an old-fashioned windmill that looks a lot like an old Van de Kamp's bakery.

Less is more; less gets the point across. A little sign that pokes up from a flower bed, looking very much like it should say BURMA SHAVE, says, instead, EVERYTHING ELSE CAN WAIT, BUT OUR SEARCH FOR GOD CANNOT WAIT. And over by the Rose Garden at the entrance there are monuments to the five great human religions: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism. But these monuments are peach-colored cement, or sandstone, just about tall enough to sit on, with little metal plaques stuck on. You don't have to look up to these things; they're like stone children, maybe four feet tall. What if, in all our striving, we and our beliefs were still childish, childlike, largely unformed, just little somethings poking up into the universe?

The people who come here don't ponder this stuff. I used to come here with boyfriends for romantic afternoons. Benches dot the path around the lake and everywhere here you see lovers entwined in long, slow, almost motionless embraces. Determined meditators keep their eyes closed, backs straight, always a little silly-looking, I'm sorry to say. Unemployed dads shepherd their kids around the lake and around again. Tourists from Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and India clump around in raggedy groups taking pictures of each other.

Farther up on this hill, the modern Fellowship has constructed a great big new temple in sparkling white and brightest gold. On Sundays, the place is always packed, but Paramahansa Yogananda himself was the one who thought up the Lake Shrine — the houseboat, the windmill, the baby waterfall with a statue of Krishna standing just above it, the bigger waterfall with Christ peering over, the tiny statue of St. Francis, the swans, the shining carp, the turtle army, the terraces and beds so dizzily cramped with flowers both rare and common that in the spring you could faint from the scent alone. What a guy, that Yogananda!

My life partner, John Espey, and I had lived in Topanga Canyon for years before we moved to Pacific Palisades. I guess we'd learned to think of nature as harsh and flammable, heavy on the rattlesnakes. It was interesting to go from clearing brush to that peaceable and temperate walk around the lake. Wasn't it just too pretty for words? Kind of a sissy place? Beautiful, of course, but not real, not like ... life?

John was very sick for two years. He'd walk around the lake, slowly, turning up his nose at the signs, because he was an atheist. But loving the rest of it.

He wanted to die at home, and that process is harder than it sounds. His family differed drastically on how best to take care of him, and my daily response to that was rage.

Winding paths, gardens, and a houseboat contribute to the serene ambience.

Every day, I'd swing on over to the Lake Shrine, right on the brink of murdering one well-meaning relative or another, and make the first circle, swearing, muttering oaths and imprecations, sneering at whoever got in my way. By the second time around, I'd remembered why I was there, how I was losing the man I loved most in the world. I'd lean against trees and weep, sit on those benches and sob. The third time around, I'd hear myself asking for courage, steadfastness, compassion! The fourth time around, I could walk, and watch.

In the scheme of things where a major religion only rates a four-foot monument, a single human death may be no more than a fall of one flower, one tweaked leaf. There are so many more! And life itself may be no more than a play toy, a few Burma-Shave signs in the universe. But blazing, amazing, for all that. You can see that at the Lake Shrine. I know I did.

Carolyn See's most recent books are The Handyman and Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America. She is the Friday morning book reviewer for the Washington Post and a professor of English at UCLA.

You are reading the May/June 2001 issue of Westways. Some information contained in this publication is time-sensitive, and the terms of some offers (cruise or vacation packages, for example) or services (provisions for roadside assistance, for example) might have been superseded by subsequent information and might no longer apply.