ABSTRACT
To collect the data for the investigation that follows, this chapter describes Cyber Zen ’s team-based ethnographic method. As students of religion and media, my research team’s onus was to create a method the purpose of which was to understand silent online meditation by making its implicit nature explicit. 2 In early January 2008, after a meditation session, Human Riddle, Rasa Vibration, and a few other community members invited me to tea. 3 Refl ecting an informal Japanese tea gathering ( chakai ), “tea” was held in a teahouse just outside the main meditation hall and was an event that consisted of sitting around a brazier on which rested a small iron teapot. 4 Clicking the teapot gave me a tea bowl ( chawan ), which my avatar cuddled in its hands as if gaining warmth on a cold winter morning. The scene was cozy, intimate, with many threads of conversation simultaneously fl ying around in public and private chat – the opposite of the structured silence of online meditation. Human asked me about my research, and I began to explain my study, mostly copying from prewritten texts on my computer’s desktop and pasting them into public chat. After I had gone on for quite a while, Rasa shared a note card on which was written, “You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you fi rst empty your cup?”
