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CYBER ZEN: IMAGINING AUTHENTIC BUDDHIST IDENTITY, COMMUNITY, AND PRACTICES IN SECOND LIFE

Gregory Price Grieve



 

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.

 

PUBLICATION DETAILS

LANGUAGE

BINDING

EDITION

ISBN

YEAR

PAGES

English

Hardcover


9780415628716

2016

278

English

Paperback


9780415628730

2016

278

English

eBook


9781315645858

2016

278

OTHER NAMES

  • Cyber Zen: Imagining Authentic Buddhist Identity, Community, and Practices in the Virtual World of Second Life

 

TAGS


Publishers: #Routledge (Routledge)

Languages: #English

Accessibility: N/A

Year: #Year2016


Companies:

N/A


Public Figures:

N/A


Games:

#SecondLife (Second Life)


Misc:

#VirtualWorld (Virtual World)

תגובות


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