Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a methodology that serves to outline different approaches to doing research on digital Buddhism. Gregory Grieve sketches an ethnographic research method that emerged from two years of study in the virtual world of Second Life and its Zen Buddhist communities. Charles Prebish discusses the origins of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics that was founded in July 1994. Daniel Veidlinger focuses on the rapid spread of seminal Buddhist ideas through the Internet. Rachel achel Wagner and Christopher Accardo look at personal technologies, such as smartphones, and explore the tension between their socially isolating features and their communicative affordances that connect people. Allison Ostrowski looks at America's obsession with Buddhism that has blossomed since its introduction in the 1800s and notes that there is a strong presence of American Buddhism on the World Wide Web.