I’ve had a little time off from work this week, so as well as my favourite holiday pastime of not getting out of bed. I spent a little time asking and maybe answering a question. What good is Second Life and can a person who is interested in spiritual awakening make any use of it? I think the answer is a definite yes. Read on…..
There are several groups of Buddhists in Second Life, I joined “SL Buddhists” and later “Skeptical Buddhists”. A quick search turned up some meditation gardens and even a whole island devoted to dharma. I’ll write about Bodhi Island first.
Bodhi Island is run by a non profit group, it’s an entire island in Second Life (hereafter SL) devoted to Buddhist teachings, as a quick aside, SL is made up of large islands, which are subdivided into plots so residents can own and/or rent property of their own. teleported straight to the island and was deposited on a Lotus flower amid some trees. After taking in my surroundings and touching a few landmarks for more information, I started to explore. As I wandered the island, I found gems embedded in the landscape which when touched gave me snippets of Buddhist teachings in the Theravada tradition. As I reached one point in the landscape, a Dharma talk started streaming, i found it pleasing to just sit and listen for a while.
There are hidden areas all over the island for the determined visitor to find, which made my subsequent visits very
enjoyable, as I found more hidden nooks that I’d missed. I think that this island just shows what can be achieved when someone thinks creatively, further, there are examples of architecture on this island that most visitors will probably never get to see up close. I’ve illustrated two of these in the screenshots, but there are more. Second Life has been criticised for being frivolous and of little value, but I’m finding that it can provide new and interesting ways of putting information across. I would never have had the chance to walk round and examine the buildings and structures I’ve seen faithfully reproduced on Bodhi island with using Second Life.
While wandering in SL I had the good fortune to find a Buddhist sangha, The Skeptical Buddhists, that meets regulary for both discussion and meditation and was able to join them for a discussion meeting. Once again this brought home the fact that SL is a new angle on communication, reference notes were distributed quickly and effectively and we were able to review the history of what had been said. I found it particularly gratifying, given my sometime unreliable memory, to be able to copy and paste the chat into a text document so I can reread it later!
I think this has been a good start, I’m looking forward to seeing where this journey leads me!
Thanks for the lovely review, Richard! Bodhi was, and is, very much a team effort, and the group synergy has been quite apparent from the early planning discussions. If you haven’t discovered the sky builds yet, you have even more to discover at 500m and up!
Metta,
Tara
Am I alone in finding this a bit spooky? It puts me in mind of that wonderful, disturbing old TV series–I forget the title–about the village in Wales (?) where no one could get in or out. A kind of virtual bubble of a place. I have to say, it disturbs me, and I’m not sure how it works with my understanding of Buddhism, which is very much about the here and now and not about some imagined “yonder” place. Perhaps there’s something here that I’m not getting?
It can be very spooky, when you wander into an empty area, a bit like one of those horror films where everyone has vanished for some reason. I think the TV Show you mean is The Prisoner? The village in that was Portmeirion. I’m finding that it’s giving me cause for concern that so many people happily admit to being addicted to it. I know people who claim to have lost friends to it.
Personally, I’m finding that SL can be very immersive and is (along with a few other things) responsible for my lack of updates recently, you have to be very careful how you approach it. I think if you take the view that it’s a communications and networking tool, then you can be fine. But when you start looking you find an economy and people running businesses and getting jobs in there, I’ll write more when I can put organise my thoughts into coherent prose.
Hi Richard i want to quote from this posting and use the photo’s for an article in the print media on -The Virtual Road to Enlightenment
will that be ok?
cheers
Jan
Australia