Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

“My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.

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Many preparations go into the celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which starts Monday.

There’s cleaning and decorating the house, buying new clothes, visiting friends and family — and of course preparing and sharing food. And although the foods associated with Diwali vary from culture to culture, one central theme is snacks and sweets.

The holiday honors the goddess Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity. It celebrates light over darkness, new beginnings, and the triumph of good over evil.

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Over the course of two centuries, ayurveda — the ancient philosophy of the Indian subcontinent — has spread West, informing ideas about healthy lifestyles with holistic skin care, diet and exercise. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have propelled ayurveda further into the mainstream, as housebound yogis, chefs and spa owners — believers, if not Hindus — percolated new techniques and businesses based on the practices developed since it began more than 3,000 years ago.

New York City has become a hub of the ayurveda trend, where the creative forces behind new ayurvedic restaurants...

After two years of cancelations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Guadalupe Buddhist Church hosted the annual Obon Festival in Santa Maria, a small city some 240 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles. Following tradition, the celebrations took place on the last Sunday in July at the Veterans Memorial Cultural Center.

The event featured drumming, dancing, martial arts, and traditional crafts drawing from the community’s largely Japanese-American heritage. The celebrations have been held locally for 75 years, following the internment of Japanese Americans during World...