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Vesak Day 2025: celebrations of Buddha

Vesak Day 2025: celebrations of Buddha

The Guardian13-05-2025
Vesak, also known as Buddha Jayanti, Buddha Purnima and Buddha Day, is a holiday traditionally observed by Buddhists and some Hindus in south and southeast Asia as well as Tibet and Mongolia Photograph: Devi Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
Visitors watch as hot air balloons are launched at Ngawen Temple complex in Muntilan, Central Java, Indonesia Photograph: Devi Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
Dancers perform in the Progo River in Magelang, Central Java, as others release fish in a traditional life-release ritual held on the eve of Vesak Day, in Magelang, Central Java Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Buddhist monks take part in a ritual on Vesak Day in Magelang, Central Java. Photograph: Dwi Oblo/Reuters
A giant thangka, a canvas painting of Buddha, is held up for people to walk under to receive blessings from the Buddha for the coming year, in Ipoh, Malaysia Photograph: Fazry Ismail/EPA
People visit a Pandal, a temporary platform decorated with illuminated panels illustrating episodes from the life of Buddha, in Colombo, Sri Lanka Photograph: Thilina Kaluthotage/Reuters
People pour fragrant water over a statue of Buddha to symbolise inner purification and act as a reminder to clear their minds of negative thoughts, at Tunjungan Plaza in Surabaya, Indonesia Photograph:Thousands of lanterns are released in front of Borobudur Temple, the world's largest Buddhist monument and a Unesco World Heritage Site, in Magelang Photograph: ZUMA Press/Alamy Live News
A monk prays during celebrations organised by the Maha Bodhi Society in Bangalore, India Photograph: Jagadeesh Nv/EPA
Devotees with lotus flowers offer prayers at the Kelaniya Temple Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
A man holds a giant incense stick during celebrations at the Enlightened Heart Tibetan Buddhist Temple in Ipoh, Malaysia Photograph: Fazry Ismail/EPA
Devotees visit the Kelaniya Temple at a suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
People light oil lamps as part of their prayers at the Kelaniya Temple Photograph: Thilina Kaluthotage/Reuters
A Buddhist monk walks around the Wat Dhammakaya Temple in Pathum Thani, north of Bangkok Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP/Getty Images
People gather around a lantern installation in Colombo, Sri Lanka Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
Buddhist monks carry candle lights at a ceremony at the Wat Saket Temple in Bangkok, Thailand Photograph: Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters
A Buddha bathing ritual at the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery in Singapore Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters
People visit the statue of Gautama Buddha to offer prayers at the Global Vipassana Pagoda, in Mumbai, India Photograph: Divyakant Solanki/EPA
Temples are decorated with flowers, and offerings of food and flowers are given to the monks Photograph: ZUMA Press/Alamy Live News
A woman lights candles at a temple in Denpasar, Bali Photograph: Made Nagi/EPA
A temple volunteer lays out candle offerings at the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery in Singapore Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters
Buddhist monks pose for a photo after praying at Borobudur Temple in Magelang, Central Java Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
A depiction of a reclining Buddha made from electric candles at Wat Dhammakaya Temple in Pathum Thani
Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP/Getty Images
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Joanna Macy obituary
Joanna Macy obituary

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timea day ago

  • The Guardian

Joanna Macy obituary

The American environmentalist writer and teacher Joanna Macy, who has died aged 96, pioneered workshops that helped people deal with anxiety over the future of the planet, and develop a fresh way of experiencing the world. Her teaching and 12 books drew on Buddhism, systems thinking – which looks at the world as an interconnected whole rather than separate parts – and deep ecology – the understanding that humans are simply one part of our living planet. Macy's most distinctive gift, however, was her ability to translate a theoretical understanding of the world and its challenges into what the Buddhist teacher David Loy called an 'embodied understanding' – something people could feel and experience directly. She first developed 'despair and empowerment' workshops during the 1970s, as a response to collective anxiety over the cold war and nuclear arms race, which led many to feel the world was on the brink of destruction. As these anxieties shifted to the climate crisis in recent decades, her work offered a way to transform people's despair into positive action, exerting a profound influence on the peace and environmental movements. Her best known programme, The Work That Reconnects, takes participants through a 'spiral' process comprising four stages. The first stage is 'gratitude', appreciating that the world is a gift. The next stage involves recognising the pain we feel in response to the state of the world and allowing it to surface as despair. 'The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll,' Macy wrote in her 1991 essay collection World As Lover, World As Self. 'The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.' Key to the process is recognising that despair can forge a compassionate connection with others, and in the third stage, 'seeing with new eyes', participants are encouraged to explore a radical different experience of the world. The final stage is 'going forth' to make a difference, or commitment to participating in what Macy called The Great Turning, that is, the transition to a 'life-sustaining society'. Macy believed that the roots of the environmental crisis were spiritual and psychological, growing from a faulty view of the world that is embedded in what she called the 'industrial growth society'. An alternative, life-sustaining society could only grow from an intensely imagined alternative understanding of life as an interconnected web. Born Mary Joanne Rogers in Los Angeles, she grew up in New York, the youngest of three children born to Margaret (nee Kinsey), a church administrator, and Hartley, a stockbroker. After graduating from Wellesley College in biblical history in 1950, she briefly worked for the CIA in West Germany, leaving in 1953 to marry Fran Macy, a Peace Corps officer and later a prominent anti-nuclear campaigner. She travelled with him to Nigeria, Tunisia, and India, where her encounters with Tibetan refugees sparked a lifelong engagement with Buddhism. In her 2000 memoir, Widening Circles, Macy wrote of this first encounter with Buddhists in the 60s: 'The company of these Tibetans filled me with a kind of wild gladness. I felt increasingly drawn to the religion – or whatever it was – that had shaped their minds.' The family returned to the US in 1969, where Macy continued to study Buddhism, mainly with Theravada Buddhist teachers. In 1978 she gained a PhD from Syracuse University with a thesis in 'mutual causality in Buddhism and general systems theory'. She argued that both disciplines implied seeing the world as an interconnected system of which we ourselves are a part. The motivation behind her PhD, she later commented, was 'religious and philosophical concerns made urgent by the world situation'. Fran's involvement in the nuclear disarmament campaign had drawn Joanna into the movement. The mixture of despair and compassion she felt led her to reflect on how the two emotions were connected and, in collaboration with the psychologist Chellis Glendinning and the activist Fran Peavey, Macy developed her first workshops. While many others in the environmental movement focused on political and scientific issues, Macy and other proponents of deep ecology promoted the spiritual transformation they believed must accompany social change. Participants in The Work That Reconnects, for instance, might be invited to identify with their ancestors in the distant past, a descendant seven generations in the future, or with a being of another species. She introduced a strong environmental emphasis to the global Engaged Buddhism movement, and the Buddhist-based Naropa University in Colorado recently established the Joanna Macy Center for Resilience and Regeneration to continue her work. A committed teacher, Macy continued to offer workshops online well into her 90s. Fran died in 2009. She is survived by her three children, Christopher, Jack and Peggy, and three grandchildren, Julien, Eliza and Lydia. Joanna (Mary Joanne) Macy, writer, teacher and environmental activist, born 2 May 1929; died 19 July 2025

Fire at illegal oil well in Indonesia kills three, hundreds evacuated
Fire at illegal oil well in Indonesia kills three, hundreds evacuated

Reuters

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  • Reuters

Fire at illegal oil well in Indonesia kills three, hundreds evacuated

JAKARTA, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Firefighters in Indonesia are struggling to contain a three-day-old fire at an illegal oil well that has killed at least three people and injured two others, a disaster relief official said on Tuesday. Some 750 people have been evacuated from the densely populated areas around the site, located in Central Java province's Blora region, Agung Tri, a member of the provincial disaster mitigation agency's rapid response team, told Reuters. The oil well was being operated without a permit by local residents when it caught fire on Sunday. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the blaze, but residents living near the well said they heard an explosion before the fire broke out, Agung said. The relief agency has deployed four excavators in an attempt to use soil to extinguish the fire, he added, but firefighters were still battling massive flames on Tuesday and facing difficulties moving equipment into the hilly terrain surrounding the site. Evacuated residents have, meanwhile, been moved to temporary shelters and local government buildings nearby. Local communities in the mineral-rich Indonesian archipelago have taken over hundreds of oil wells abandoned by companies after they proved to no longer be economically viable. Many are illegally operated with lax safety standards. Indonesian authorities have recently moved to legalise those operations, issuing a regulation in June that allows small companies to partner with residents. The policy is intended to boost the country's oil production while improving safety standards and protecting the welfare of communities.

Trying to keep cool in an increasingly hot world
Trying to keep cool in an increasingly hot world

The Guardian

time4 days ago

  • The Guardian

Trying to keep cool in an increasingly hot world

As temperatures rise around the world, the inequality between those who can afford to stay cool and those forced to suffer is laid ever more bare. For some, air conditioning is a given; for others it is an unaffordable luxury. The photographer Gaia Squarci and researcher Jacopo Crimi visited Brazil, India, Indonesia and Italy to photograph the stories of people in extreme heat and how they are learning to adapt to it. Their project, The Cooling Solution, visualises how people are adapting to rising temperatures and humidity among different socioeconomic groups, and investigates how accessible air conditioning is for these people. 31C (87.8F) | 65% humidity | An office worker at the Ministry of Public Works, a green building in Jakarta, Indonesia, 2022 Crimi said a lot of modern architecture was made up of isolated, air-conditioned units that crammed people in together. But after realising these flaws, some architects began using new technologies to designed buildings that do not rely on AC. 'We wanted to show positive examples,' said Crimi. 'Architects were implementing both modern ways of tackling heat, such as the building in the photo, but as well reviving ancient architecture. A solution exists for alternatives to air conditioning, but it requires affluence.' 28C | 71% | A family on a scooter in the Kemayoran neighbourhood of Jakarta, with high-rise buildings in the background, 2022 Squarci said the streets of this subdistrict in Jakarta were crammed with scooters with multiple riders on them. The temperature of the motorbikes and the weather made it an uncomfortable commute for riders and 'even if there is family in the photo, it speaks to the mass and plurality of people's experience', she said. With large buildings in the background, the photo illustrates a division of wealth between those in technologically developed areas and others exposed to the extreme heat on the streets. 29C | 72% | Children dive in the Cachoeira Piscininha do Silvestre, a waterfall in the neighbourhood of Cosme Velho in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2022 In this photo, young children swim in a pond to cool down. Although it is not the case here, there are cases when entering a polluted body of water is the only means for some people to escape the heat, leading to severe health risks. 'When deciding for this project how we were going to represent the topic of air conditioning, we decided we had to represent people from all social classes. Those with AC and those without,' said Squarci. 32C | 50% | Anna Gabriela Patrocinio Gregório (centre) and her daughters Lara, eight, and Sãnella, five, pose for a portrait at their home in a favela in the Santa Teresa neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro Crimi said: 'We found that the photos that were the most interesting and told the deepest story were the ones closely related to the intimate dimensions of a person.' Gregório said that while she was pregnant with her two children, she often felt sick and fainted because of the heat. With no windows in her house, she had to rely on a small fan on the floor to stay cool. 26C | 77% | Residents of Rio's Bangu district chat outside a shopping centre, a desirable destination because it has AC, 2022 This modern shopping centre in Bangu was built with air conditioning and attracts locals trying to escape the heat. Access to these air-conditioned spaces is especially important for the demographics that struggle most with heat, such as elderly people and children. For people who cannot afford an AC unit at home, these air-conditioned public spaces are often the only places where they can find respite. 26C | 77% | People stand in the streets of the fishing village of Worli, overlooking the residential buildings of Mahim, now a wealthy area of Mumbai, India, 2019 The unequal levels of wealth and affluence in Mumbai are shown on the two sides of the river, distinguishing the technologically advanced city in the background from the underdeveloped small settlement in the foreground. Squarci said the photo 'shows the transformation of the city, developing much faster in emerging countries than other areas that are trailing behind, living without the means to adapt to the growing heat'. 28C | 34% | Visitors gather to watch an informational video in an air-conditioned room of the Nehru Planetarium in Delhi, India, 2019 Spaces such as hotels, leisure centres and planetariums in India are accessible locations for wealthy people to enjoy air conditioning. The cinema room at this planetarium had AC installed, but for Squarci and Crimi, the room felt extremely cold and was in stark contrast to the heat experienced by lower socioeconomic groups in India. Squarci said the photo symbolised 'the abuse of AC, and I did not want to perpetrate visual stereotypes in these developing countries. It is important to include examples of the higher middle class and their experience in India and Brazil.' 31C | 60% | Tourists take over Piazza San Marco during the Festa del Redentore in Venice, Italy, 2015. The offer of flats for short stays is one of the main drivers of AC adoption in tourist cities At Piazza San Marco in Venice, tourists and residents must both endure and attempt to enjoy. The photo captures a child being thrown into the air, which Squarci described as 'a need to make the image interesting. Even when we are talking about something sensitive, I welcome anything that can catch people's attention. There are moments of joy and moment of leisure, even in these extreme situations.' 22C | 62% | A man stands on the balcony of a residential building in Bolzano, Italy, in the shadow of trees shielding him from the direct summer sun, 2022 The photo, taken from a hotel window, shows an older man leaning out of his balcony under the shade of a tree. Squarci and Crimi said: 'One of the most vulnerable demographics are the elderly, and because there was shade on the side of the building, he could thankfully access the open air.' The pair chose to visit Italy for this project because they want to connect western audiences to their message and bring the issue closer to home. 25C | 75% | A German family sits in the shade of a boat pulled aground on a beach in Stromboli, a volcanic island near Sicily, Italy, 2022 The shadow of a boat was the only shade on the beach. They said they did not expect it to be this unbearably hot, and the father said they 'scrambled for a little piece of relief from the heat' in the shadow of the boat. Squarci and Crimi said they often found themselves taking shelter in similar ways while working on the project. 28C | 68% | Andrea Squarci, 69, watches a tennis match on TV during a heatwave at Lido dei Pini, a seaside location about an hour away from Rome. The house where Andrea lives with his wife, Chiara, since his retirement in 2019, is right in front of the sea Squarci said her father usually did not use air conditioning and would open a window to let a breeze into the house, but that on rare occasions the temperature would be too hot for him and he would have to turn on the AC. Squarci took the photo of her father because she wanted to show a middle-class Italian person who could afford air conditioning and used it sparingly.

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