Buddhist Media Technologies (without references 7,143 words, with references 8,915)

Gregory Price Grieve and Daniel Veidlinger

As the oldest extant proselytizing religion, Buddhism has always had a penchant for

utilizing the latest developments in media technology to spread its message. In the wake

of the well-known fifteenth-century Gutenberg Bible it is often overlooked that the oldest

extant printed book is actually a copy of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra that reads: “Printed

on 11 May 868 by Wang Chieh, for free general distribution, in order in deep reverence

to perpetuate the memory of his parents”(Lee 1940, 9, see McLuhan 1962). Buddhist

Sutras from China were not only the first printed books, but along with coins were the

oldest mass produced artifacts of any kind in the world. In contemporary society,

Buddhism continues to explore the use of new popular media. For example, on

September 15, 2014 a search for “Buddhism” in the Apple iTunes store yielded 419

applications (Compare to Wagner and Accardo 2015).1 One of these applications,

Karmasation, was offered for free under the category of “Lifestyle” and promised to

“track your karma and improve a score that matters”(GFO Design 2013). This is in

addition to the thousands of Buddhist websites, blogs, and podcasts that are available to

anyone with access to the Internet.

As these examples illustrate, from the earliest texts that were transmitted orally to

the latest online versions of the Buddhist canon, the form and usage patterns of Buddhist

1 This number is just a few less applications than the 491 that were found during a search for “Christianity.” Considering that there are at least four times more Christians in the world than Buddhists, the fact that there are just a few dozen more Christian apps speaks volumes about the degree to which Buddhists and people interested in promoting Buddhism are busily using the latest media technologies.

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media technologies have varied considerably, particularly in contemporary society

(Grieve and Veidlinger 2015). Do such media transformations merely transmit the old

dharma in a new bottle, or do they change Buddhism’s message? And if changes in the

religion follow on the heels of new technologies, are these to be welcomed or shunned?

Opinions about digital technology have run the gamut from wary skeptics who fear that it

can be a hindrance to progress along the Buddhist path (Hershock 1999) to enthusiastic

evangelists who embrace the possibility that technology can be spiritually transformative

(Kurzweil 1999). The website Buddhist Geeks sees digital media as aiding in the path to

enlightenment and asks along with many practitioners who are contemplating the future

of the religion, “How can we serve the convergence of Buddhism with rapidly evolving

technology and an increasingly global culture?”2 This contemporary debate about the

benefits and detriments of the latest media to the practice of Buddhism has a family

resemblance to earlier disputes that arose from time to time as radically new media were

being made available in popular culture. For example, in Cambodia, the use of printing

presses for Buddhist books was prohibited until the 1920s out of the fear that mass

production might diminish their sacred value (Chigas, 2005, 30). Perhaps in hindsight we

might criticize the Buddhist establishment in that country for taking this position, but as

the debate rages on in our own time about the degree to which Buddhists should embrace

new media, it is important to remember that good reasons can be forwarded for all the

positions on the table.

We take a middle path in the debate between media as mere transmitters of

content, and media as corrupting the authentic meaning of the message (Mander 1978,

McLuhan 1964, Shannon 1948). Obviously the Buddha’s dharma could not exist in the

2 https://www.buddhistgeeks.com/koan/

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world of daily life if not for the media technologies by which it is communicated. Also

just as different languages affect the meaning of the Buddha’s message (Park 2012), so

different media technologies influence how Buddhism is understood and practiced. We

argue, however, that while media technologies tend to promote particular aspects of

Buddhism, different Buddhist worldviews also shape how these media are used

(Campbell 2010). Using the Karmasation app as a touchstone, the chapter discusses four

issues. First, we sketch a short genealogy of Buddhist media technologies. Second, we

concentrate on contemporary digital media, briefly describing Buddhist bulletin boards,

email lists, websites, computer apps, virtual worlds and video games. Third, we explain

digital media’s procedural, participatory, encyclopedic and spatial affordances. Finally,

we illuminate how digital media affordances are shaped by the technological worldview

of convert Buddhism.

It is important to gain a better understanding of Buddhist media technologies

because while Buddhism thrives in digital media environments almost no attention has

been given to its study. The field of religion and new media is large, for in 2001, the Pew

Internet and American Life Project’s “CyberFaith: How Americans Pursue Religion

Online” demonstrated that already over twenty-five percent of Americans were searching

for information about religion online, and this number has only grown since then.

Furthermore, Buddhism seems to flourish online more than other traditions (Veidlinger

2015b). For example, while the Pew foundation’s “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”

(Pew 2007) indicates that American Buddhists account for only 0.7 percent of the

nation’s population, research shows that Buddhist related activities constitute around

5.3% percent of online religious practice in the virtual world of Second Life (Grieve

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2010), and other online environments also boast high rates of Buddhist engagement

(Ostrowski 2015; Veidlinger 2015b). However, despite this, the major pioneering studies

of religion and media technologies have all but ignored Asian traditions. This is even

more apparent specifically with digital media. Over the past few years, a number of

scholars have begun to study religion and new media and have questioned how these

affect notions of community, authority, identity and practice (Brasher 2001; Campbell

2010; Cowan and Dawson 2004; Hojsgaard and Warburg 2005; Karaflogka 2006).

Buddhism, however, has not been prominent in these studies, even though many forms of

Asian spirituality have had an even bigger impact in the digital environment than in

offline society (Veidlinger 2015a). Likewise, even these few studies that do touch upon it

tend to approach the topic from a decidedly Western perspective (Cho 2011).

Media Technology and Buddhism in Historical Context

According to Karmasation, the application records “your actions, thoughts, and

experiences” and gives “genuine feedback about whether you have earned good or bad

karma.” An obvious question to ask at this point: Is this even Buddhism? We

acknowledge that there is no one authentic form of Buddhism. The Buddha’s Dharma has

been adapted throughout its history more completely than any other religion to the

contours of the societies in which it has found itself. Consider, for instance, the Buddha’s

core ideas about things such as anātman, or no-soul. As the very title of Jungnok Park’s

book (2012) How Buddhism Acquired a Soul on the Way to China suggests, the doctrine

of anātman has been so thoroughly transformed in different environments that it is not

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clear whether its various manifestations can even be considered the same religion. Just as

Buddhism has undergone significant changes in different geographical environments, it is

also undergoing changes in media environments. It is adapting to the ethos of these media

just as surely as it adapted to the existing cultures in different parts of the world where it

took root.

Media technology refers to the material systems by which people communicate

(Grieve 2006, 19-20). Like languages, media technologies do not merely transmit

information, but shape the message by accelerating, retarding or blocking a

communication’s meaning (McLuhan 1964; Carroll 1956). For instance, television

accelerates images and sound, retards interior mental reflection, and blocks smell and

touch (Mander 1978). Understanding media technology is significant because by shaping

communication it also molds the society in which that communication takes place (Krotz

2008). An illuminating example (pun intended) is brought forward by Marshall Mcluhan,

who argues that the purest form of media is the light bulb, which contains no content, yet

shapes society by enabling people to create social spaces that would otherwise be

enveloped by darkness (1964, 8).

Media technologies also can create an environment for religious change (Hjarvard

2006). As the media theorist Walter Ong argues, different media afford different

religiosities (1967; see Mander 1991). “Indeed,” as Ong writes in The Presence of the

Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History, media technology “asserts

its effects simultaneously on quite diverse sensoria, from the highly visualist sensorium

of technological cultures veering toward new organizations in sound, to the sensoria of

primitive cultures which have not yet crossed the threshold of literacy”(1967, 11). Ong

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suggests that religion began in an era of orality, was transmitted into visual form through

the writing of manuscripts as well as the printing of books, and is now taking shape in the

world in a new way via electronic media (Campbell and Grieve 2014, Grieve 1995;

Grieve and Heston 2011). A host of other thinkers have realized since Ong that along

with other physical embodiments of religion such as dress, images, and sacred spaces,

media “structure experiences of the transcendental” as anthropologist Birgit Meyer has

said (2006, 20), and therefore both religion and media should be understood in concert. A

better understanding of Buddhism can therefore be expected to emerge through an

investigation of its relationship to media technologies as well.

The Buddha himself knew that communicating his message to as many people as

possible would be a key element in the success of his Dharma, or teachings. From the

beginning, the Buddha stressed that monks should go forth and spread the teachings in

their own language (Vinaya II, 139), and from that time, communication has played a

crucial role in Buddhism. The Buddha lived probably during the fifth century BCE in

northeast India before writing was used in that region (von Hinuber 1989), and therefore

all of his sermons were retained and passed on through an oral tradition that partook of

the astonishingly sophisticated tradition of Vedic memorization (Staal 1986), and added

some of its own techniques (Allon 1997). The Suttas all begin with the phrase “evaṃ me

sutaṃ” which in Pali means “Thus have I heard,” which attests to their oral origin.

Monks would spend many hours of each day memorizing texts, and much of their

training and the very organization of the early saṃgha into groups responsible for

different kinds of texts was structured so as to foster the memorization and transmission

of the teachings (Veidlinger 2006a). The texts themselves were usually designed for

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memorization, and a number of their formal features developed in order to facilitate

memorization (Collins 1992). Many early Buddhist texts took the form that they did in

order to be easily memorized as much as to embody the Buddha’s teachings in a specific

way. Here we already see evidence of one of the key elements of media theory, namely

that the medium used to transmit a message will often have profound effects on the shape

and form of its content.

Once writing came to India in the middle of the third century BCE, it was the

great Buddhist king Ashoka who was the first to use it in any appreciable way. He was

quick to see the benefits of this new technology and placed inscriptions on rocks and

pillars at key points throughout his kingdom that communicated his decrees to the people

and helped to promote the Dharma as well. Most of the evidence of early writing in India

in the centuries after Ashoka is likewise Buddhist in nature, such as donative inscriptions

on stūpas and other sites of Buddhist import (Salomon 1995). The Pali Canon is

traditionally said to have been written down at the Fourth Council held by learned monks

in Sri Lanka during the first century BCE (Mahāvaṃsa 33.100). If true, this would

certainly be the earliest organized project in the region to transmit religious texts in

writing. The use of the communication technology of writing, then, was far more

associated with Buddhism than with any other Indian religion (Veidlinger 2006b).

Writing was not just an expedient means to transmit and record content, but also shaped

Buddhist practice. For instance, amongst the earliest Mahayana literature is the influential

Prajñāpāramitā genre that dates back about two millennia and highlights the importance

of wisdom and insight into emptiness. In these texts the faithful are commonly enjoined

to copy and worship the text itself in passages such as the following: “…if someone else

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were to learn this perfection of wisdom, recite and study it, and wisely attend to it, would

reveal it to others, and would honour, revere, and worship, with flowers, etc… a written

copy of it; then [he] would on that account beget…merit.” (Conze 1975, 248).

Moving a few centuries later in history, we find that one of the most important

developments in human communication was a product of the Buddhist milieu in

Medieval China: printing evolved in monasteries during the heyday of the religion in the

Tang dynasty (618 – 907 CE) (You 2010). Like writing, printing was also deeply

entwined with the practice of Buddhism. For instance, as stated at the start of the

chapter, and as can be seen in Wang Chieh’s book, it is likely that the admonition to

generate merit by copying the Mahayana texts inspired Buddhists during this period to

carve the pages of sacred texts such as the Diamond Sutra and the Lotus Sutra onto

wooden blocks and print many copies in what were the first printed books anywhere in

the world.

As this genealogy makes clear, for centuries Buddhism has been taking advantage

of the latest means for getting its message across, and has also been profoundly affected

by changing media technologies. This strategy has only increased during the modern

period. For instance, when radio was introduced in Asia, it was eagerly taken up by

Buddhist preachers to communicate sermons and canonical readings to the masses and

helped to allow people in remote villages to gain access to the teachings of the leading

preachers and scholars of the day. Tape cassettes were also used for this purpose (Engel

and Engel 2010). Again we find media technologies molding Buddhist practice. Such

modern media have radically changed the shape of Buddhism by, amongst other things,

affecting the authority of the monks who previously were the sole guardians of the sacred

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texts. Until these relatively recent developments, most common people in Buddhist

countries had access to the teachings of the religion only through the sermons given by

local physical monks. Now, they could access the teachings from their own home on

television, radio or in printed books which has led to a growing interest among laypeople

in meditation (Braun 2013) as well as renewed interest in the original canonical texts

which often place less emphasis on the kind of merit generating rituals that have been the

backbone of local Buddhist practice throughout Asia for centuries (McMahan 2008).

Contemporary Digital Media Technologies

In contemporary society, Buddhism is still at the forefront of media technology. For

instance, the Karmasation app is free and after registering and completing a survey, the

application gives users a choice of starting a “karmasation” or awarding “karma points.”

If you choose to award karma, it displays a map of the world on which are located

different pins. Clicking a pin displays a karmasation, which is an event to which users

can award karma, such as “trashed my car in an accident this morning luckily no one was

hurt.” Karmasation then asks the user to “post your actions, thoughts, and experiences,

and receive genuine feedback about whether you have earned good or bad karma.”

What is the relation between digital apps such as Karmasation and other digital

media? In the not so distant past, the Buddhist presence online consisted of email lists

and bulletin boards (Ostrowski 2015, Prebish 2015). For instance, Buddhists and

scholars of Buddhism were amongst the first people to establish Internet-based discussion

forums, the oldest of which is Buddha-L. Buddha-L came into being in 1991 at which

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point there were few discussion forums to use as a model. The Buddhist Studies WWW

Virtual Library was another early resource from 1992 containing such things as

bibliographies, biographies, directories, Buddhist electronic-texts, poetry, and sermons

(www.ciolek.com/wwwvl-buddhism.html). The Journal of Buddhist Ethics founded in

1994 was the first peer-reviewed online journal in Religious Studies and has been a model

for many other online journals established since that time (Prebish 2015). This included

popular forms as well. For instance, Buddhist magazines aimed at practitioners such as

www.thebuddhadharma.com , www.shambhalasun.com, and www.tricycle.com reside on

robust and well trafficked websites that are often visited by those seeking information about

Buddhist beliefs and practices, and in particular how they relate to life in contemporary

society.

Presently, besides apps, contemporary Buddhist media technologies generally

consist of websites, virtual worlds and even video games (Connelly 2015). By far, most

Buddhist digital media consists of websites. For instance, a particularly popular and

helpful website with information for the serious student about all forms of Buddhism,

including primary and secondary textual sources, full-text ebooks, Buddhist art, extensive

links to other Buddhist sites, and much more is www.Buddhanet.net. It exemplifies the way

that contemporary digital media are being used to shape, strengthen and transmit Buddhism.

As the Website states: “In this way, an ancient tradition and the information superhighway

will come together to create an electronic meeting place of shared concern and interests.”

Another important area is Buddhist blogs, which have exploded in popularity over the

last several years (McGuire 2015). Nate DeMontigny’s blog Precious Metal features a

logo showing a man with a shaved head and multiple tattoos, wearing a black t-shirt with

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a dharma-chakra on it, with two arms in a meditative gesture and two others making the

“sign of the horn” or the “rock hand sign” while also holding Buddhist prayer beads and a

vajra.3 Many similarly eclectic ideas and images can be found on other Buddhist blogs

throughout cyberspace.

Buddhist Digital Media also consist of virtual worlds and video games. An

example of a virtual world is Second Life, a three-dimensional immersive, interactive

virtual world housed in cyberspace, and accessed via the Internet. Through on-screen

representations, called avatars, millions of Second Life users explore virtual worlds,

communicate and socialize with one and other, as well as create, sell and purchase virtual

goods. Surprisingly, many Second Life residents practice religion, a sizable percentage of

which consists of a form of Buddhism that centers on the Zen inspired practice of silent

online meditation (Grieve 2015a , Falcone 2015). An example of a Buddhist inspired

video game is the digital artist Bona Kim’s The Buddhist, which is meant to adhere to the

tenets of Buddhism by divorcing it from a "hero / heroine-driven linear narrative."4 A

second example of a Buddhist inspired game is Ian Bogost’s Guru Meditation for Atari

consul and Iphone, which was the designer’s attempt to “to create a legitimate zen

meditation game.”5

Digital Media Affordances

Yet, is the Karmasation app and other digital media really new, or are they just the same

old Dharma packaged in a new contemporary digital wrapper? Take for example what

might be the most surprising form of online practice, the Buddhist communities found on

3 https://preciousmetal.wordpress.com/author/preciousmetal/4 http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/18/the-buddhist/5 http://bogost.com/games/guru_meditation/

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virtual worlds (Falcone 2015, Grieve 2010, 2012, 2015a, 2015b, Grieve and Heston

2011). This is a wholly new social space in which users practice Buddhism, and Buddhist

teachers spread the Dharma. It is remarkable that although the medium is completely

new, and not restricted by physical limitations, many of the practices that occur within

the virtual world itself look rather like those that occur in the actual flesh and blood

world. Avatars bow as they enter the meditation hall, and then proceed to take a seat on a

zafu, after which they sit in silent meditation, bodies perfectly posed. Sometimes, an

actual monk living at an Asian monastery in the real world may give a Dharma talk, often

even using voice chat technology that makes his real voice appear to be coming from the

Avatar. After the session, there may be a tea and informal discussion amongst members

before going on their way.

Conversely, many pre-digital media technologies resemble contemporary forms.

Are digital applications, such as Karmasation radically different from earlier forms of

Buddhist media technology? If by “app” we mean a simple technological device that

encapsulates some key data and helps one to achieve certain tasks throughout the day,

then a maṇḍala is a media device that is really a kind of “app.” It encodes an enormous

amount of information that helps the faithful to negotiate the spiritual realm, and serves

to remind the aspirant about key features of the Buddhist cosmos and the message of the

Dharma.

We maintain, however, that while having a family resemblance to earlier forms of

media technology, contemporary digital artifacts such as Karmasation differ because of

their four affordances: procedural, participatory, encyclopedic and spatial (Murray

2012). Affordance refers to the properties that shape how an object can be used (Gibson

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1979, 127; Norman 1988, 8). For instance, a doorknob affords the opening of a door.

One could force a door by kicking, but using the knob affords its smooth release. Digital,

or new, media are composed of such things as digital audio, digital video and computer

games as well as online media such as websites, e-mail, social sites and multi-player

games. Digital media, as opposed to analog media such as newspapers, film, and vinyl

discs, can be glossed as those electronic media that are handled by computers as a series

of numeric data (Grieve 2012). All digital media technologies are composed of

programmable bits that can be used for symbol manipulation, and thus share common

affordances. “Bit,” a portmanteau of binary digit, is the basic unit of computer-assisted-

communication. Opposed to analogue media that use a physical property of the medium

to convey the signal's information, bits, like a row of on/off switches, can have only one

of two values that are most commonly represented as “0” and “1.”

The first affordance is the “procedural,” which refers to how digital media can

execute conditioned responses (Murray 2012, 51-55). Digital media can mimic the linear

unisequential design of legacy media such as films, and books, however its uniqueness lies

in the ability to execute abstract sets of instructions and rules known as an algorithm. For

instance, when one opens Karmasation, one is given the choice between either starting a

karmasation, or awarding karma. If one chooses “award karma” one is taken to a

geographic map that displays all local “karma events.” The classic example of the

procedural affordance is Joe Weizenbaum’s program Eliza, which applies formulated

responses to the user’s statements in order to simulate a nondirective conversation with a

psychotherapist.6 The procedural affordance is clearest, however, in the physics of virtual

worlds such as Linden Lab’s Second Life. Physics here refers to the underlying code that

6 http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm

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simulates the laws of nature by enabling or limiting a user’s choices (Bartle 2004, 3).

Because of the procedural affordance, rather than a single version digital media allow for

emergent events with many possible versions that branch out during use. Digital media’s

procedural affordance is clear in Karmasation. For instance, by posting your own “karma

events,” and voting on other’s posts, your own “karma profile” emerges from your

responses. Just like Google’s search engine, however, Karmasation’s procedural

affordance gives the appearance of infinite possibility. In fact, however, your choices are

limited by your prior choices, and the scripts built into the computer code.

The second affordance is the “participatory,” which defines the ability of users to

intervene, respond and see the effects of their intervention in real time (Murray 2012, 55-

66). For instance, Karmasation “allows users to both post and vote anonymously, earning

and awarding karma points along the way . . . giving other users the opportunity to vote

and award good or bad karma.” The participatory affordance calls for a coded dialogue

with digital media, and users have an expectation that things will happen according to

their actions. Such dialogues follow a coded script. Often this script is rigid, such as in

phone-based automated customer service systems. Sometimes the script is transparent

and overlooked, as exemplified by the blinking cursor of a word processing program. As

illustrated by Karmasation, participation increasingly calls for social interaction with

other people as well as human machine interaction. Social media consist of such things

as chat rooms, bulletin boards, discussion lists, blogs, wikis, instant messaging formats,

virtual worlds, social networks and media-sharing. For instance, Karmasation not only

incorporates participatory and social media into its app, but also has supporting blogs,

facebook pages, and twitter accounts.

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Digital Media technologies also afford new communities, and other social

relations. We are now seeing the development of communities of Buddhist practitioners

online, known as cybersanghas, which as Charles Prebish (1999) has pointed out include

several types: sites that provide information about events connected to real world

communities, online extensions of existing Buddhist Sanghas that allow for the practice

itself to occur online – virtual temples - and virtual Sanghas that exist online only, with

no corresponding physical meeting place (Helland 2004, 2005). There are also many

groups connected to Buddhism on social networks such as Facebook and in virtual

worlds such as Second Life. YouTube videos, podcasts and especially blogs about topics

related to Buddhism proliferate, and there are e-cards, smartphone apps providing daily

doses of Buddhist wisdom, virtual tours of Buddhist sites and temples in Asia, and much

more (McGuire 2015). The Internet is also used to mobilize political opinion about Tibet

and create a sense of community in face of Chinese oppression (Helland 2015, Osburn

2015). In the future, there is little doubt that Buddhism’s digital presence will expand

even more as these technologies pervade every corner of our lives (Connelly 2015).

The third affordance is the “encyclopedic,” which refers to digital media’s

unequalled potential to store and transmit information (Murray 2012, 55-66). Digital media

technology’s unequalled encyclopedic capabilities respond to the human need to collect,

preserve, and transmit knowledge. As Gordon Moore noted in 1965, new computer chips

seem to be released about every two years, which double the processing power of the

preceding generation. “Moore’s Law” has held true for over half a century. The readable

tape drives of the 1960’s held up to two million characters (two megabytes) and were the

size of a household refrigerator. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century,

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personal computer’s storage was measured in terabytes, and users carried keychain sized

storage devices equal to dozens of the 1960 tape readers. Even more important for the

encyclopedic affordance is that most digital media now accesses the Internet, which at least

gives the illusion of access to universal knowledge.

Much Buddhist digital media utilizes the encyclopedic affordance for the storage

and transmitting of scripture, and other documents. For instance, in the late 1990s, The

Vipassana Research Institute (VRI), founded by wealthy Indo-Burmese businessman S.

N. Goenka, produced a CD-Rom containing the entire Pali canon based on the Burmese

1956 edition produced at the sixth council to honor 2500 years since the Buddha’s

Nirvana (www.tipitaka.org), and there have been numerous other projects to put the

Dharma into a digital form. The VRI edition allows the text to be read in a variety of

scripts, including Latin, Devanagari, Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai and even Mongolian.

Such changes were intensified with the popularization of the Internet. For instance, a

Thai edition of the Pali canon from 1928 has been digitized and put on a CD-ROM by

Mahidol University, and the Website www.AccessToInsight.org has put a great many

English versions of the texts online. Currently, there are many searchable databases with

enormous collections of Buddhist texts, including the Chinese canon (http://21dzk.l.u-

tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/index_en.html) as well as the Tibetan canon (http://www.tbrc.org).

The encyclopedic affordance is not at first clear in Karmasation, until one takes into

account the mapping feature. At its core, Karmasation’s function is to store and share

people’s “conversation” of what they perceive to be karma. This is similar to the

experiment “My Life in Bits,” which attempted as completely as possible through

photographs, video and audio recordings to totally record the life of the Microsoft

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researcher Gordon Bell.7 The difficulty that both Karmasation, and Bell, encountered was

how to organize the incredible amount of data so that users are not overwhelmed. Using

both simulations of legacy media, such as labels and tabs, as well as digital media

hyperlinks, Karmasation creates a taxonomy between “my Karma” and “my Posts” that

are organized and made accessible by laying them on to a geographic map.

The final affordance is “spatial” that refers to how digital media are perceived as

spaces through which users navigate (Murray 2012, 66-80). The spatial affordance is

clearest in virtual worlds, and video games in which users perceive themselves to be

moving through different environments. The spatial affordance can also be seen in the

graphical user interface (GUI) in which users operate a mouse to “move” Windows,

Icons, Menu, and Pointing devices (WIMP) around on a computer’s screen. It is also

evidenced in how digital media are spoken about. Users “logon,” “go to” Webpages, and

also “open” files on their computer screens. Again the spatial affordance is not readily

clear in the Buddhist app until one starts a “karmasation” at which point the screen

changes to a map of the user’s current location to which a pin of one’s post is added. The

pinning of the karma event to the map interpolates the user into a larger community, in

which other users can award karma. Both the posting of karma events, and the awarding

of karma, create a conversation between user and application that is organized through

digital media’s spatial affordance

The Convert Buddhist Digital Media Technological Worldview

Buddhist media technologies are also shaped by the technological worldview out of

which they emerge. A “technological worldview” reflects the ways in which media

7 http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mylifebits/

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technology are linked to economics, politics and culture (Grieve 2013, 2015b). There is

no doubt that from the beginning a romanticized Buddhism and Buddhist ideas loomed

large in the development of modern computer science (Veidlinger 2015a, Grieve 2015b).

Take for instance, the well-known cases of Steve Jobs who for a significant period

considered himself a Zen Buddhist and Mitch Kapor, who called the first commercially

successful spreadsheet program “Lotus.” One might assume that the entanglement of

Buddhism and digital media occurred because many of the founders were influenced by

the 1960s counter culture (Turner 2006, Markoff 2005, Nelson 1974). Long before the

1960s, however, the pioneers of computing often used ideas derived from Buddhism to

describe the world. For example MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener, who pioneered the

field of cybernetics in the nineteen forties, described it as “the study of messages as a

means of controlling machinery and society” (quoted in Turner 2006, 22) and

emphasized that it was a systems approach to organization rendering the traditional,

hierarchical command chain into a more effective command cycle in which feedback was

incorporated into the calculus of the system (Grieve in press). Wiener himself quickly

began, through his studies of cybernetics, to take on a remarkably Buddhist

understanding of human beings, famously saying “We are but whirlpools in a river of

ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.”

(Wiener, 1967, 130)) (Grieve 2015b).

Many early developers perceived that Buddhism shared with computers a creative

freedom to revolutionize the world. The “digital” was seen to have a manifest destiny, it

was a positive and revolutionary technological development through which all the

world’s problems could be creatively and innovatively solved (Brasher 2001; Rheingold

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1993; Thacker 2003). As Esther Dyson argues in “Cyberspace and the American

Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age,” digital media will lead to the “creation

of a new civilization, founded in the eternal truths of the American Idea” (1994). Often

digital Buddhism is tied to a similar technological ideology, in that it is seen as more than

a new way of communicating, but as a new vision for society: its practices are often

posed as revolutionary, and tied to the triumph of human creativity and freedom over

dogma and blind tradition. As Karmasation reads: “People may simply enjoy the self-

validation and awareness they gain from using Karmasation, but we’re also hoping that

the App inspires some friendly competition to earn the best karma score, thereby

promoting positive actions. We truly believe Karmasation can change the world for the

better.”

As a religious media technology, Karmasation attempts to make sense of the

contemporary world by invoking sacred practices and beliefs. It makes suffering

bearable by making it meaningful. Yet, because it is viewed as creative and not tied to a

tradition, often in contemporary society Buddhism is seen as a way to be “spiritual but

not religious,” as a way to make sense of the world, and do good, without giving into he

dogma of organized institutions and blind belief (Armfield and Holbert 2003, Barna

Research Group 2004, Dawson and Hennebry 1999, Fuller 2001, Hoover, Clark and

Rainie 2004, Pew Internet Project 2001, Roof 1993, 1996, Zaleski 1997). As

Karmasation reads: in your free time “have fun while improving a score that matters.”

Examples of “karma events” include a doctor who helped the homeless, a man giving a

200 dollar tip, a firefighter saving a dog, and a motorcyclist who retrieved a cup of coffee

off the top of an SUV.

19

Yet, such “karma events” are rarely if ever permanent solutions to the chaos of

contemporary life. While they may make the suffering in contemporary life bearable,

they do not change the social conditions that created the suffering in the first place.

Instead they are understood better as “workarounds,” a term taken from computer

programming that indicates a temporary creative solution to a problem (Grieve 2012).

Workarounds typically imply that a genuine solution to the problem is still needed, and

tend to be brittle, breaking under further pressure or from unforeseen change. In other

words, applications such as Karmasation can be seen as temporary means to cope with

the conditions of living in what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman characterizes as “Liquid

Modernity,” an era stemming from the late capital global market economic system that

began in the early 1970’s, and has linked it to the rise of new digital media (2005). Often

digital Buddhist practices stem from and are the product of the stresses produced by

contemporary society, which has dissolved traditional religious communities and

institutions so that individuals have to actively explore and create novel, elastic,

temporary, and flexible forms. In a liquid modern life one must be constantly ready to

change tactics, and abandon commitments without regret, so as to pursue all opportunities

when they arise. Still, such practices are tied into users’ ultimate concerns.

Future Outlook

Looking at the state of media and Buddhism today illustrates that contemporary

Buddhism is being shaped for many people by the affordances of digital media

20

technology. When a smartphone application like Karmasation helps users share “karma,”

there can be little doubt that the Internet, mobile phones, video games and other

incarnations of digital technology are changing the face of Buddhism worldwide. Yet, are

media technologies independent agents able to shape Buddhism, moving it in directions that

are dictated by the logic of the technologies that are being employed or are they simply

neutral conduits of Dharma practice? Taking the middle path that culture and media are

co-dependent (Campbell 2013, Hoover 2006 we argue that while media technologies do

not determine the form Buddhism takes, the digital does afford specific types of Dharma

practice (Grieve 2006; Grieve and Veidlinger 2015).

There is no doubt that Buddhism is thriving in these new digital environments and

as more and more people spend increasing amounts of time online, Buddhism is likely to

be shaped to a significant degree through its relationship to new media. Online Buddhism

greatly expands the possibilities for Buddhist involvement on the part of people who have

geographical or physical challenges when it comes to finding or getting access to a real

world Buddhist center. The anonymity provided through this system also allows for more

frank discussions about, and also criticisms of, Buddhist doctrine. The access to

information that was previously the preserve of highly trained scholars or advanced

practitioners, coupled with the horizontally networked nature of the Internet tends to

weaken the existing hierarchies in all organizations, including Buddhism (Campbell and

Teusner 2011). Virtual worlds in a variety of forms will also play a larger role in

religious practice, and as they do, the very notion of who and where a person is will be

challenged by the embodied nature of such practices as prostration and meditation.

21

Given changes and challenges such as these, Buddhism, is likely to fare well in

the world of contemporary media. Besides a history that has primed Buddhism for a rich

life in the new digital frontier, Buddhist philosophy has dealt more extensively than any

other religion with the question of whether or not the world of experience is real, and as

such is a potent source for thinking about the nature of virtual reality (Falcone 2015).

The centrality in Buddhism of desire and its dangers also provides a unique vantage point

into the manifold desires generated by current ways of living in our mediated, hurried and

uncertain culture, where the decoupling of production from the physical world and the

empowering of imagination to call forth virtual realities has replaced an earlier needs-

based society with one powered by desire and consumption.

Buddhism seems to thrive online more than other religious traditions because its

popular form shares a worldview with digital media. Buddhism in particular possesses

historical, philosophical and practical attributes that are salient to the topic of

contemporary media technologies. Digital media are nothing if not impermanent.

Webpages are liable to change every day and woe betide they who think that an item found

online at a particular site will be there next week. That suffering is deeply intertwined with

this sorry state of impermanence is very much apparent to anyone who has ever worked on a

paper only to find it disappear when the computer crashes before it was saved, or becomes

infected by a malicious virus that erases the memory. Furthermore, that there is no

permanent, unchanging Self is highlighted by the experience of Digital media, where one

person may log on to various Internet sites as completely different personas (Veidlinger

2015a).

The Buddhist ideas of karma, dependent origination, and compassion are salient

22

to the digital world as well. Just looking at one’s facebook wall, for example, makes it very

clear that what one does is not occurring in a vacuum, but has ripples that extend far beyond

the doer, and that may come back to the doer in some way in the future. Social Media may

help to cultivate compassion in various ways as well, the most basic being the simple but

powerful effect of seeing one’s connections to others around the world. Much as Buddhism

emphasizes the interdependent nature of things in the world, where nothing stands on its

own and everything is conditioned by other things, so Social Media bring to our awareness

the presence of others in our lives, and of us in theirs, which has been shown to generate

compassion. A massive study of how the Internet affects relationships was conducted in

2004 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and it showed that the Internet does

not appear to be damaging interpersonal relationships and attitudes towards each other.

The study showed that people use the Internet to mobilize their social networks in times

of need to good effect and they are more likely to receive help through networks

established on the Internet than are people who do not use the Internet

(http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/The-Strength-of-Internet-Ties/08-

Information-Is-a-Conduit-to-Help/2-People-use-their-social-networks-to-seek-

information-and-advice.aspx)..

Buddhism, a religion that has historically adapted very successfully to new media

environments, and also holds the idea of constant change as one of its defining

ideologies, is thriving in this new world order. The chapter has demonstrated that digital

Buddhism is not simply a re-packaging of traditional Dharma practices wrapped in a new

medium. There is no doubt that the characteristics of digital technology in many ways

imprint and inform the character of contemporary Buddhist practices. On one hand

23

digital media create a new opportunity for Dharma Practice: by clicking a link,

Karmasation allows for instant religious practice. Yet, the anxieties which necessitate

such clicking, and also the fact that there are few traditional face-to-face opportunities or

locations, are produced by a liquid modern life, and stem from the conditions of late

capitalism in which traditional religious communities, institutions and practices have

dissolved under pressure from a market driven economy.

As mentioned above, because it is understudied there is an obvious need for

further research on contemporary Buddhist media technologies. What is not as obvious is

that digital Buddhism can illuminate media more generally. In fact, Karmasation already

hints at emerging forms of media technologies. First, media technologies will use

algorithms to be smarter, knowing not just what users say they want, but what their

actions indicate. As such, we will see more directive algorithms, and the applications

that support it. Second, new media will be even more mobile and we will see an increase

in augmented reality in which digital media are laid over physical, real-world

environments, just as Karmasation creates a karma map that pinpoints karma events in

the real world. Third, new media will continue to grow more interactive. Like

Karmasation, Buddhist media technology will be infinitely more interactive,

incorporating wikis, video, audio, and in many cases their own social networks. Lastly,

like Karmasation’s karma points, more and more applications will be outsourced to the

cloud, with users accessing information stored on the web remotely from netbooks, pad

computers, smart phones, or other devices.

What combination of these features will dominate emerging Buddhist media

technologies one cannot tell. It is safe to predict, however, that digital media in whatever

24

form will play an increasingly significant role in the future of Buddhist media

technologies. Because of its flexibility, and relative inexpensiveness, digital Buddhism

will continue to play a key role in allowing people to actively explore and create novel,

temporary and flexible forms of Dharma practice. Moreover, if we have not already

reached the tipping point, Digital media will soon be at the center of information and

content distribution, having absorbed newspapers, printed books, movies and even

television. This may lead to quite a change in the scholarly approach to Buddhism.

Because the discipline of Buddhist studies has often assumed that “Buddhism” can be

reduced to printed scripture, new and popular religious practices that are based in these

new media have tended to be marginalized in the past. By understanding emerging

media technologies, however, we can glimpse the near future of Dharma practice,

especially as it is a response to contemporary life.

25

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