Praying respect: Buddhists around the world have been celebrating Vesak, commonly called Buddha's Birthday, a holiday that honors the birth, enlightenment, and passing of the religion's founder, Siddhartha Gautama. About 397 million people, or 5.8 percent of the world's population, are Buddhist. Above, monks on May 7 pray at the Borobudur temple, which dates from the eighth and ninth centuries, in Magelang, on the island of Java in Indonesia.

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