ABSTRACT

This chapter analyzes the Hoben Mountain Zen Retreat and the four other groups that make up Second Life’s convert Zen Buddhist community. On July 23, 2009, I received an Instant Message (IM) from the resident Rasa Vibration requesting that I interview her. I hesitated, which may seem surprising. 1 One might assume that I would be pleased by such an offer. I and the other members of my research team had just spent the last two months inworld tracking down and cornering residents for just such interviews. Rasa, however, was known to create drama, which the Second Life wiki defi nes as “A way of relating to the world in which a person consistently overreacts to or greatly exaggerates the importance of benign events in Second Life . . . as a way of gaining attention or making their own lives more exciting.” 2 After a second IM, I relented and clicked her teleport invite and found myself rezzing (materializing) in the jazz club Rick’s Cafe. Unlike the avatar she used at Hoben, Rasa had taken on a highly sexualized form, with a dominating tall curvy fi gure and wearing a long fl owing red ball gown. After refusing her offer of a dance, I sat down on a barstool. I asked Rasa why she logged onto Second Life. Because of her reputation as a drama-queen , I expected her to talk about herself. Instead, she brought up the importance of the Hoben community to her life and said, “We come together to sit online.” She went on to add, “we are a saṅgha , a community, of like minded travelers on spiritual paths.”