@book {2161, title = {Cyber Zen: Imagining Authentic Buddhist Identity, Community, and Practices in the Virtual World of Second Life }, year = {2016}, publisher = {Routledge }, organization = {Routledge }, edition = {1}, address = {London}, abstract = {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}, keywords = {Buddhist, cyber zen, Virtual World, Zen}, issn = {978-0415628730}, url = {https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317293262}, author = {Grieve, G.P} } @book {297, title = {Digital Zen: Buddhism, Virtual Worlds and Online Meditation}, series = {Religion, Media and Culture }, year = {2013}, publisher = {Routledge}, organization = {Routledge}, address = {new York}, abstract = {Because it makes its practitioners mindful of desire, _Digital Zen_ argues that the primarily Western converts who practice Anglo-Buddhist digital religion offer a form of religion that allows them to flourish in a late capitalistic society. Much contemporary popular religion is a protest against, and also a product of, the suffering produced by the desires of living in late capitalism. Being mindful of desire is crucial for human flourishing in late capitalism, because while {\textquotedblleft}solid{\textquotedblright} modernity was driven by need and production, the current {\textquotedblleft}liquid{\textquotedblright} system is driven by desire and consumption. Digital Buddhism is an apt place to locate such desires because freed from the physical, digital media display the unhindered imagination of its users, and Buddhism, throughout its historical phases, has seen desire as the cause of suffering.}, keywords = {Buddhism, Digital, Ethnography, Meditation, Second Life, Virtual World, Zen}, author = {Grieve, Gregory} }