Solidarity With Los Angeles
Dear friends,
Do you remember this place in California where Shihan Seagal teached Aikido to many students?
It is in this house that Shihan Seagal trained Lyoto Machida...
This is a amazing text wrote by Mrs Seagal some days ago.
A fire broke out in Los Angeles on the street that was once my home. In 2002, I moved to Hollywood, worked for Steven Seagal's film company, and got married a few years later. Our first home was in a forested canyon called "Mandeville Canyon" in the small town of Brentwood, Los Angeles, where many celebrities live and have mansions. The Palisades area, which is now completely engulfed in flames, is only 20 minutes away from ours. After giving birth to her son, Reese Witherspoon, one of Hollywood's top actresses, bought our house when she moved to Arizona to live in a more peaceful place. As the fire spread, I wondered what would happen to my old house, until 4 days ago, it came right down to our street and the first few houses started burning. Whether it's because former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Tom Selleck, Bruce Springsteen, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Greg Kinnear live there, or because of the power of the Dharma, it's been four days since we arrived, as you can see in the picture. It was obvious that firefighters were doing their best to remove the dry trees and bushes in the area and moisten the ground well. Why the power of the Dharma? In addition to studying the Dharma with the great Dharma teachers and the sound of the bells and drums on our property for many years, we had built two large stupas there. One was the Buddha stupa, and the other was the Ochirvaan stupa. When we moved, we begged them to leave the stupas as they were, but Reese Witherspoon didn't agree, so they had to move them to a remote provincial monastery in a big pile. Now I think, if those two stupas had been there, would there have been such a terrible disaster or not? It is also strange that the fire has stopped in our street.
May the earth be peaceful, many levels!
Note: in the picture showing the spread of the fire, the green line is Mandeville Canyon, and the blue dot is our house.