1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910154706603321

Autore

Grieve Gregory P (Gregory Price), <1964->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Routledge, , 2017

ISBN

1-315-64585-8

1-317-29325-8

1-317-29326-6

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (287 pages) : illustrations

Collana

Media, religion and culture

Disciplina

294.3/44028566

294.344302854678

Soggetti

Internet users - Religious life

Religious life - Buddhism

Identity (Psychology) - Religious aspects - Buddhism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.