Sunshine & Buddha

"Mobile mindfulness: Practicing digital religion on smarpthones with Buddhist meditation apps"

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:46:00 -0600

Last week, I successfully defended my thesis, titled [see long and winded title of this post]. I think this explains my two-month absence from tumblr. I want to eventually put the entire paper all online, but with its 91-page word count, I’m still considering my options. Hopefully, once I’ve relaxed and stepped away from the paper, I can revisit it with fresh eyes and edit it down to an article-length piece. For now, here’s the first page:

Religion online, one of the newest form of religious expression, provides an open and unlimited arena for information, dialogue and community, for religious practitioners, the spiritually curious, and everyone in between. Alongside other religions, Buddhism has found its place in the virtual world. Digital representations of Buddhism are present in personal blogs, throughout so- cial media sites, and in institutional websites. Anyone can download audio files of dharma talks, view instructional meditation videos, or read illustrated biographies of the Buddha. The site BuddhaNet offers a searchable “World Buddhist Directory,” Tricycle magazine’s website features articles on how to be Buddhist in a business-centric world, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama posts video lectures on transnational compassion. Many of these representations lack an anchor to any specific Buddhist tradition or institutional referent, even material accredited to traditional teachers.

One of the more interesting examples of Buddhism online is the expanding market of smartphone meditation applications (apps). Especially trendy in the West, these mobile apps pack Buddhist practice into the framing of a smartphone. And while this new medium features interactive components that other mediums lack, such as instant, quantitative evaluation and easy mobility, the smartphone medium and the app itself removes institutional framework and ritual elements of traditional Buddhist meditation. The apps offer portable meditation practice, without commitment to a religious organization, adherence to regular practice, or involvement in any religious community. With no institutional framework, the apps transform meditation into a spiritual and psychological self-improvement exercise and transports it indo the middle of daily activities such as the urban commute.

More thesis theory teasers.

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:48:00 -0700

Play + ritual + meditation + modernity + smartphone apps.

“Genuine play possesses besides its formal characteristics and its joyful mood, at least one further very essential feature, namely, the consciousness, however latent, of ‘only pretending.’ The question remains how far such a consciousness is compatible with the ritual act performed in devotion” (Huzinga 1950: 22).

Thesis, short excerpt

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:15:00 -0700

A taste of Part I from my upcoming thesis. I can’t emphasize enough that this is a first draft. Suggestions/comments welcome @jpiacenza.

Looking first at the physical medium of the smartphone, we see the values the medium emphasizes and which it negates. The device values individual audial, visual and touch sensory and disregards permanency and community. Walter J. Ong famously highlighted our cultural tendency to privilege certain communicative elements as our standard mediums for communication change. For example, audial aspects took prominence in our oral storytelling before the invention of the printing press, after which its importance quickly plummeted, only to rise again with the invention of and our habitual use of the radio as a communicative medium. Ong, along with Marshall McLuhan, emphasized this importance of the medium over the message. The switch from oral traditions to writing, for example, not only changed the need for societal literacy, but made “possible increasingly articulate introspectivity, opening the psyche as never before not only to the external objective world distinct from itself but also to the interior self whom the objective world is set” (Ong 1982: 105). The change in medium generated a new, interior awareness of the self and a subsequent alienation of this self from the external world (O’Leary 1996: 784). Stephen O’Leary cleverly notes that religions offer solutions to this feeling of alienation, an after-effect of the psychological changes caused by writing and literacy, or a change in the medium.

Radio show: Buddhism, meditation & technology

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 19:35:00 -0700

Very proud of this project, completed this past month: the latest podcast of “Sacred Lines,” a collaboration of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture and KGNU Independent Radio. This episode focuses on Buddhism, Meditation & Technology, and I helped organize, write, produce and was interviewed for the show.

Click here to listen. Our show starts at the 39:35 mark.

Reach of reddit: some link love.

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:18:03 -0700

Although this great article does not discuss religion, it shows the reach and power of reddit.com, as described in my previous post, “Atheism on reddit.”

The article’s author (not the writer featured in the piece) has previously written onvideo game religion.

Image of Ganesha from a professor’s fieldwork, to wish...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:16:18 -0700

Image of Ganesha from a professor’s fieldwork, to wish that he removes obstacles for all in the New Year.

Atheism on reddit

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 09:20:00 -0700

Lately, Fox News has had their mistletoe in a bunch over the most rapidly-expanding “religious” group in America: atheism. Recent articles and clips have blamed atheists for taking all the fun out of national religiosity, especially with Christmas right around the corner for us kinda-sorta-Christians. Coming from such a slanted news source, the immediate instinct is to dismiss this sensationalized media hype; but to be fair, there is a very real, dark and biased side of American atheism that Fox News is dead right about.

The huge “social news” website reddit is responsible for a good amount of this religious slander. The site, whose name is “I read it on reddit” play on words, is often called the “front page of the Internet.” Especially popular with younger demographics - think college kids procrastinating during finals week - the site is most known for the guaranteed distraction provided in its endless pantheon of links. But before you dismiss it as a site full of cat gifs and ridiculous memes - which makes up a lot of the site - check out the facts. Reddit has 43 million users, 3 billion monthly page views, and over one million subscribers strong to the subcategory, or subreddit, “r/atheism.” In brief, reddit is what your guy friend/boyfriend/husband is really looking at when they say they are checking email/getting work done/looking into those Vermont B&Bs you’ve been pestering him about. The male demographic is something we’ll get to later, but first some background on reddit’s take on atheism.

Reddit’s atheism forum is huge. Search for “atheism” in Google and reddit’s site pops up third. According to their FAQ’s, the sub-category focuses on the rejection of any sort of religious divine, but they spend a hell of a lot of time dismantling, taunting, and chastising it as well. Last year, Rebecca Watson wrote that “Reddit makes me hate atheists,” after the site’s atheism community digitally sexually harassed a young female contributor. Why? She was young and attractive, and made the horrible mistake of including her likeness in a picture she posted. As Watson aptly notes, reddit, especially r/atheism’s reddit, is “jam packed with assholes” but remains incredibly addicting and popular.

A quick note on website monitors: reddit paints its moderators and filtering process in the lightest of shades. According to the site’s general FAQs, moderators can remove “inappropriate” content, but it doesn’t really spell out their default definition of “inappropriate”; further, subreddit FAQ admits that it is very loosely moderated.”

The “r/atheism” community specializes in posting screenshots of snarky responses to religious social media status updates. Given, many of the statuses represent the extreme end of religious orthodoxy, usually Christianity, but some are simply gentle proclamations of faith. Because reddit is incredibly timely, the site was full of statuses referring to the Newton, Conn. shooting. One reddit user posted a screenshot of his lengthy response to a “Jesus is real” picture on Facebook, which turned into a debate over God’s absence in the Newtown shootings and eventually, the lack of government funding in public schools. Another user calls a Facebook friend “a slave to totalitarian and tyrannical theocracy” after posting a Christian prayer for those affected by the shooting. The link reads, “I don’t think I went toooo [sic] hard on him.” Another posting, “This girl’s status showed up on my newsfeed, I dealt with it the only way I could think of: By sharing her stupidity with the rest of the Facebook world,” features a comment suggesting that removing God from our schools has brought evil - in the form of a mentally unstable 20-year-old - into our everyday lives. The reddit poster then lists off a dozen events and organizations that he claims (he gives no explanation or definition for the list) revolve around religious violence.

More generally, one user calls all Catholics “completely ignorant” of the branch’s pedophilic history or in support of it, calling the Catholic Church a “fairytale that no rational logical adult should believe.” The user proudly announces in the link that, ” Yes I am blunt and rude.” Another post taunts a friend’s status that tries to look past the pain of a recent kidney stone by putting faith in God. The post features Stewie from the show “Family Guy,” with the question “Are you retarded?”

“R/athism” is much more than these social media screenshots. The subreddit also offers lively scientific debate, links to pro-atheist and anti-religion articles, and general conversation revolving around theism, religion, and being an atheist in today’s world. However, a large part of the online community includes these combative social media statuses, and offensive memes.

And it is this aspect that really encapsulates the driving force behind the “r/atheism” community: being argumentative little bitches bullies. Links like “Christianity: A tale of the needy and they hypocrite” and “How would you attack this theist’s argument???” egg on these New Atheist members. Reddit users respond to statuses of faith with narrow-minded, default “it/he/they don’t exist and you are dumb for thinking that” postings and then brag about their hatred on the reddit forum. Usually the screenshot links include some sort of call for reassurance, a “what to you think,” at the end of the description. The “r/atheism” boys club is pumping each other up and slapping each other on the back for each biased posting, literally one-upping each other when you take into account reddit’s voting system. The subreddit community is an over exaggeration of “New Atheism,” led by the (all male) voices of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. Last year, Victoria Bekiempis noted that fewer women take on an atheist approach because they have been brought up to value social standing and family-rearing over the individualism infused in men’s upbringings; basically, “women are God-fearing and don’t challenge institutions. Men, on the other hand, are skeptical and rational, and go out of their way to call bullshit on faith and religion.

Whether that’s true or sexist – or both – the “r/atheism” community is being just as intolerant and judgmental as the institutionalized religions they are aiming their keyboards at. Worse, they are using the online forum as a virtual locker room, bragging about their latest malicious hit. Although American atheists are far from starting an actual or digital war on Christmas, those posting and voting on reddit are not exactly straying to far from the Grinch. And I think they like it that way.

The message isn't the medium

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:52:59 -0700

Since joining Twitter in early December, the Pope has received a good amount of ridicule from the online world. It’s really been a lose-lose situation so far: the Catholic Church has long held the reputation of being dated and secretive, and now they’re being accused of selling out. Hate tweets aimed at @pontifex span from requests of apology for his digital presence (would the apology come via Twitter?) to general taunts and accusations of pedophilia. Obscenities litter many of the 140-character of less messages, either out of personal pious disgust that such a holy man has joined the social media site, or out of outrage that a religious leader has no place on the new medium.

And here’s where my issue lies: it’s really not about the medium, it’s about how you use it (sorry, McLuhan). The Pope is simply staying up-to-date on the newest platform of communication. He did the same thing in the over two dozen books published under his name; it’s all about the use of the medium. Benedict XVI kept the level of “class” and “tact” expected from a Catholic leader when he “wrote” Jesus of Nazarath: The Infancy Narratives or Holy Men and Women Of the Middle Ages and Beyond. There are plenty of vile, crappy books out there. But they don’t define the medium. Just as Jason Biggs lovely ant-Pope rants on Twitter don’t define that medium. Sure, Twitter is full of people sharing what they had for breakfast or complaining about traffic; but to say that it’s not a space for religious expression or representation is more narrow-minded than this. Religious online communities, especially for the devout in diaspora, are increasing every year. And you know what, if it provides some sort of spiritual security, guidance or authenticity for someone, who are we to smack any sort of label on it.

We’re cool with the Dalai Lama being on Twitter; we tolerate Rick Warren’s presence as well. Just because the Pope represents a somewhat-antiquated religious organization doesn’t mean he’s not invited to the party. Let’s just wait and see how the Pope uses Twitter; or, better yet, if he actually responds and interacts (using @) to his followers, something many high-ranking religious authorities refuse to do on the site.

[A wonderfully accurate religious/spiritual misrepresentation,...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:19:19 -0700

[A wonderfully accurate religious/spiritual misrepresentation, and exactly what makes my research so much fun to interpret and investigate. Another interesting tidbit: when Googling “meditation causes…” the first three insta-answers were negative: depression, insomnia, headache]

Look who finally joined the party.

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:12:33 -0700

Pope Benedict XVI made headlines last week with the announcement that he had joined the micro-blogging site, Twitter. Benedict now goes by @pontifex and his PR team is already promoting the hashtag #askpointfex, which encourages faith based questions from his online audience. Benedict has been a member of Twitter for less than a day, has not tweeted anything, and has almost 1,000x more followers than I do. Sigh.

The Pope is in good company online. Benedict joins a pantheon of religious leaders on Twitter: everyone from the social media powerhouse His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Christian extremist Rick Warren, popular author and blogger Rabbi Rami, and Muslim enthusiast Queen Rania Al Abdullah bring strands of spirituality to the site and onto followers’ Twitter feeds. And while the Vatican has its own Twitter handle on the site, which often times included news from or about the Pope, this calculated move by the Catholic Church is one of many recent excursions into the digital. Last summer, with the Vatican’s initial emergence into social media, came a new website featuring Vatican Radio, videos of the Pope, and Flickr picture galleries.

And with this announcement comes the promise of a mobile app, awaiting approval from Apple for release. Called “The Pope App” (no really, and it’s not even from a former Onion headline) will “allow Catholics to follow papal Masses and events in real time,” though no word on just how – video, audio, message streaming, etc. Pretty cool, huh? This app will join the ranks of the controversial confession app, Buddhist meditation apps, and Muslim prayer apps.

There are a couple things going on here: the cultural division of religion and technology and the consistent personalization of religion in modernity. So, some may say that the Pope joining Twitter signals organized religions “giving in” to new media and technology. Religion has been put in this archaic, antiquated category while technology gets to be bright, shiny, and new. Religious fundamentalists have found ways around using technology, from Amish isolation to the Kosher cell phone. But why does a presence in the virtual world equate to some sort of religious surrender? The Internet is just the newest medium for communication and expression, ousting the newspaper and television for the very convincing reasons of speed and convenience. Earlier this year, we learned that about half (46%) of Americans own smartphones; and almost a decade ago, we discovered that over half (64%) of Americans used the Internet for religious reasons. For institutionalized religion, it just makes sense to go where your adherents are. And they’re online.

As for the continued individualization of religion, we can blame/credit the medium for this. The Internet elevates the individual - just think of social media profiles that project a highly polished version of yourself or music websites that create playlists just for your tastes and preferences. Bon Iver doesn’t play on everyone’s Grooveshark, unfortunately. The smartphone, where many read Twitter messages, is simply a saturated version of this aspect. There is nothing more personal than the your phone: it brings you individualized communication from your network of friends and family, filtered news and information that you want to read, and games that measure your best performance, then uploading the scores online to brag to your online community. All kept physically close to your body - smartphones rarely leave their owner’s side. It’s called CrackBaby for a reason. And it makes sense that any religious leader or organization would want this level of intimacy with its adherents.

Choose one: homophobia or sexism

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:10:57 -0700

[Not a post on Buddhism.]

After watching “Gay Men will Marry Your Girlfriends” and its Scotch Tape response video, it’s pretty clear who the scapegoat in all this is: the girlfriends. Women in these videos are painted as needy, desperate, emotional to-be-housewives that gay men threaten to wed only to achieve marriage equality, and straight men despise and ultimately want to get rid of. It’s important to note that there are no actual women depicted in either video, not even in the background. Women, in these videos, are simply interpretations of their male counterparts. And they’re not flattering.

We’re trying to erase homophobia by implementing sexist tropes that push back women’s rights back decades, ala Mitt Romney. Although I think the first video was innocent enough on its own, the response video is just blatantly ”boys club” and actually highlights some of the sexist remarks in the former video.

I am anxiously waiting for a third response video. Some kick-ass women have to be equally as disturbed as I am of these videos, and hopefully more witty. I imagine some sort of “We don’t want to marry anyone” clip to go viral soon.

Photo

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:29:28 -0700

Quick reflection that is too long for a tweet, too short for anything of substance

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 09:38:26 -0700

It is ironic that the focus of my upcoming master’s thesis is the one thing that is crippling my advancement: the medium. I’ve been typing out sections for the last couple weeks, toggling back and forth between pages and documents, scrolling endlessly (I’ve written a lot. Not all of it is good) and really struggling to re-absorb the bigger picture of my thesis, which seemed so clear only a month ago, neatly written in a small abstract. The problem is my computer screen. Yes, I shelled out the extra couple hundred dollars for two more inches of screen on my MacBook Pro (rationalizing that I would do more freelance graphic design - I’ve had two projects in two years) but it’s still restricting. I’m forcing my mind to think within the contraints of my computer screen, just as the meditation apps I am writing about are pushing the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha into a smartphone. My solution? Printing everything out, buying a whiteboard, transitioning a corner of my room into a workspace (student housing, let’s be honest, it’s my whole room) and going at this project physically. Opening up the medium.

Two more Religion Dispatches posts

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:48:00 -0700

Happily, giddily, continuing my blogging relationship with RD. Two newest posts: Buddhists & Hindis in Congress and James Bond’s M as a Christ figure.

Spiritual Sandy

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:16:00 -0700

For all the talk that Sandy was an ominous warning from God for America’s alleged sins – materialism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pick your poison – Bloomberg Businessweek is setting things straight. BW’s cover story this week flaunts the title, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid,” with a can’t-deny-it meteorological image of Sandy looming above. The article’s no-nonsense take puts scientific evidence first. And while conversation shifts into clean energy policies and the upcoming election, the article contains an underlying agnostic theme. That Sandy’s cause was not divine, nor is it’s solution.

This article is in the minority, however, at least for this media cycle. Many new sources are playing into the spiritual and emotional side of the disaster, posting articles about blaming God (or ourselves) and encouraging community prayer. Statistically, our country is moving away from self-identification with any institutionalized religion; but we’re very much a spiritual society, especially during ineffable experiences like this.

Photo

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 09:31:53 -0700

"Inspiration pinned"

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:14:43 -0600

Check out Adam J. Copeland’s post on digital inspiration on Pinterest, with a walk-on role from yours truly.

Photo

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:26:07 -0600

Reaction to a reaction

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:24:39 -0600

This post is a bit of a reaction, or a reaction to the reaction, from my latest post on RD. The article addresses recent violence in Myanmar, between local and powerful Buddhists and minority Muslims. The whole point of the article, however, is not to report on this recent burst of violence, but rather to analyze how the violence is being reported. Basically, no one wants to read about Buddhists doing bad. As a Western society, we have recreated Buddhists in the purest light. They are simple, isolated holy men (rare do you imagery of a female Buddhist - and yes, they do exist). They do not fall prey to regular human emotions, such as anger or lust or greed. Contrast that with our view of the Islam faith. Although some may interject here, citing the religious views of the group of men responsible for 9/11, we cannot let the action of a few create our perception of the whole.

Check out the article - and the comments - if you have a moment. Although I appreciate when people comment on my work, positively or negatively, the comments are quite ironic, and I don’t think those that wrote them realize it. They’re playing into the stereotypes that I’m trying to argue against. There’s a Tibetan saying that I think is appropriate for this sort of one-mindedness: “A pickpocket encounters a saint, and all he sees are the other man’s pockets”

The art of the crossword

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:07:56 -0600

After reading a particularly dense book for an independent study with anthropologist Dennis McGilvray, I mentioned that sometimes I just need to step away from the material. Step away from the pretentious scholarship, step away from the thick theory, step away from the research who clearly used and abused thesaurus.com. My hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia starts to kick in [oh yes, it’s a word, and it may be the most ironic world in the English language]. Dr. McGilvray laughed, agreed, and said that his mantra is to set down whatever he’s working on and give it twenty-four hours. Walk away, turn off your brain.

I just can’t do that. I live in constant fear that if I turn my brain off it will literally never turn back on. I’d need to jump-start it with Foucault, have Weber give it mouth-to-mouth, lull it back on with Asad. Although I don’t believe Asad “lulls” anything, really.

My solution reaches back to my childhood, watching my father on our front porch doing crosswords. At first, I detested the puzzles. I am a results-oriented person - ask anyone who has witnessed my baking obsession. Crosswords were too difficult, and therefore, yielded no results. But thanks to the free NYT crosswords in every edition of UW’s Badger Herald, they got easier. I saw patterns. I absorbed way too many four-letter words. I learned Toyko’s previous name (Edo, constant clue). I turned on a part of my brain that was usually ignored. Yes, I was in college and, ahem, studying all the time, but it was a different section of my neurons. A section I return to even now, in between research papers, PhD personal statements, and thesis work. It keeps my brain on, in neutral, chugging away like an old Ford truck, resting and waiting for me to put it into drive.

But it’s not the only active thing I do in my in-between time. Sometimes I write blog posts.