The world has changed in countless ways over the past 50 years. The digital revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the climate change crisis, the advent of artificial intelligence — these and many other game-changing developments have made the world of 2023 very different from that of the ’70s.
The Agon Shu Buddhist Association held its first annual Fire Rites Festival in 1970. Against the background of these past five decades of change, the festival — the world’s biggest such event — has been a constant source of spiritual solace and inspiration. Every year, members of the association make a pilgrimage to the site of the festival, an amphitheater in Agon Shu’s complex of shrines and temples in the hills of eastern Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital.