Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

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

Publication

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

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 265 pages; 25 cm.

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 a product of and authentic response to contemporary Network Consumer Society. Gregory Price illustrates that to some extent all religion has always been virtual and gives a glimpse of possible future alternative forms of religion. -- Provided by publisher.

Series Statement

Media, religion and culture

Uniform Title

Religion, media, and culture series.

Subject

• Second Life (Computer game)
• Internet users > Religious life
• Religious life > Buddhism
• Identity (Psychology) > Buddhism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

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.

ISBN

• 9780415628716
• 0415628717

LCCN

^^2016025191

OCLC

• 965543767
• SCSB-12751169

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library