Cyber Zen : imagining authentic Buddhist identity, community, and practices in the virtual world of Second life / Gregory Price Grieve.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grieve, Gregory P. (Gregory Price), 1964- author.

Series:

Religion, media, and culture series

Media, religion and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Second Life (Computer game).

Internet users--Religious life.

Internet users.

Religious life--Buddhism.

Religious life.

Identity (Psychology)--Religious aspects--Buddhism.

Identity (Psychology).

Physical Description:

xii, 265 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017.

Summary:

Cyber Zen ethnographically explores Buddhist practices in the online virtual world of Second Life. Does typing at a keyboard and moving avatars around the screen, however, count as real Buddhism? If authentic practices must mimic the actual world, then Second Life Buddhism does not. In fact, a critical investigation reveals that online Buddhist practices have at best only a family resemblance to canonical Asian traditions and owe much of their methods to the late twentieth-century field of cybernetics. If, however, they are judged existentially, by how they enable users to respond to the suffering generated by living in a highly mediated consumer society, then Second Life Buddhism consists of authentic spiritual practices. Cyber Zen explores how Second Life Buddhist enthusiasts form communities, identities, locations, and practices that are both products of and authentic responses to contemporary Network Consumer Society. Gregory Price Grieve illustrates that to some extent all religion has always been virtual and gives a glimpse of possible future alternative forms of religion. Book jacket.

Contents:

Second life: your world, your imagination

Awake online: understanding Second life's Zen path of practice

Groups: relationships, cloud sanghas, and a cybernetic management style

People: Buddhist robes, cyborgs, and the gendered self-fashioning of a mindful resident

Place: cosmologicalization, spiritual role play, and a third place Zendo

Event: online silent meditation, virtual cushions, and the cybernetic steersman

Mind the gap: screens, ontologies, and the far shore

Theoretical tool box

Second life terms

Buddhist terms.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Grieve, Gregory P. (Gregory Price), 1964- author. Cyber Zen

ISBN:

9780415628730

0415628733

9780415628716

0415628717

OCLC:

965543767