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Zen Buddhism and Media Zen Buddhism and Media A study of how media alter or reinforce Zen Buddhism in Norway Jonas Gabriel Berg Master Thesis Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages UNIVERSITY OF OSLO 14.12.16 II Zen Buddhism and Media A study of how media alter or reinforce Zen Buddhism in Norway © Jonas Gabriel Berg Zen Buddhism and Media Jonas Gabriel Berg The University of Oslo Autumn 2016 http://www.duo.uio.no III IV Abstract This thesis concerns how the media, especially the Internet, influences Zen Buddhist practices and discourses in Norway. Various social networks, such as Facebook, make it possible to expand religious discourses and make them available all over the world. Not only are social networks on the Internet a means of communicating, but frequently, different sources related to Zen Buddhism are assuming media forms, being shared and commented on. By analyzing how the Rinzai Zen Center and the Norwegian Soto Zen Buddhist Order, two of the main Zen Buddhist communities in Norway apply media forms, I show how the Internet influences their practices and discourses. Most importantly, this is shown by how members from the two communities are relocating real-life discourses to the Internet, on Facebook. Furthermore, I have interviewed members from the two communities in order to give a more detailed account of how the members understand their own application of the Internet and other media forms. V Acknowledgements For the first time of my life I can say that I understand what it means to have written a master’s thesis. It has been an inspiring process, although I must admit that it sometimes felt like fighting a beast. Now in retrospect, I feel thankful. First and foremost, I want to thank Hanna Havnevik for her guidance and patience. It would not have been possible without her help. I want to give many thanks to Kim and Sara for helping me with proofreading and ideas. Many thanks to my sister Frida for being there for me when I needed support and help. Last, but not least, I want to thank J Mascis for his songs that kept me going. VI Table of contents Zen Buddhism and Media ........................................................................................................ III Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... V Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. VI 1 Introduction to the research topic ....................................................................................... 1 1.1 The Norwegian Zen Buddhist landscape ..................................................................... 3 1.2 Buddhist modernism – tendencies and categories ....................................................... 6 1.2.1 Buddhist modernism – tendencies ........................................................................ 6 1.2.2 Buddhist modernism – categories ...................................................................... 15 1.3 Mediatization - theory and process ............................................................................ 22 1.3.1 Mediatization – related concepts and categories ................................................ 28 1.4 Summarizing .............................................................................................................. 31 1.4.1 Buddhist modernism and Mediatization – a unified theoretical framework ...... 36 2 The empirical data and analysis ....................................................................................... 39 2.1 Presenting media participation on Facebook ............................................................. 40 2.2 Summary of participation on Facebook..................................................................... 51 2.3 The interviews ........................................................................................................... 56 2.3.1 Rinzai Zen Center – interviews .......................................................................... 60 2.3.2 The Norwegian Soto Zen Buddhist Order in Kristiansand – interviews ............ 66 2.3.3 Summary of the Interviews ................................................................................ 71 3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 81 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 92 Internet sources ........................................................................................................................ 94 Internet sources – videos .......................................................................................................... 95 Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 95 VII 1 Introduction to the research topic The concepts “religion” and “media” are often mentioned together. Although there seems to be few apparent connection between these two concepts, apart from all the news about religiously motivated terror attacks, as well as other often negatively oriented news, these two concepts actually have a lot in common. It is the difficult, or one could say impossible to determine at what point in history these concepts first appeared, and they are more intertwined than one perhaps would initially anticipate, both historically and today. In this thesis, I will not try to reconstruct the history of the interrelation between “religion” and “media,” since this would certainly require a life time of work. Nor will I try to discuss how religion is being portrayed in the contemporary news media. I will rather try to find out and explain how these concepts are related in contemporary Norway. In order to do this, I have chosen to focus on Zen Buddhism in Norway. There are several ways in which Buddhism in general, and Zen Buddhism in particular, and the media may be connected or interrelated. This is something that will be discussed further on in this thesis. In order to examine how media and religion are intertwined, I will base my research on the mediatization theory, which postulates that the media cause alteration or reinforcements of different social and cultural practices. The research topic concerns how the media can alter or reinforce Zen Buddhist practices, with an emphasis on how Zen Buddhism, as a result of the growing importance of the Internet, can assume media forms and how practices are being shaped by the Internet. I will do this by focusing on two profiled Zen Buddhist communities in Norway, which are Rinzai Zen Center in Oslo and the Norwegian Soto Zen Buddhist Order in Kristiansand.1 Both media and Zen Buddhism are phenomena that may refer to a vast array of different things, it is therefore necessary to redefine the meanings of these categories. When I use the concept Zen Buddhism in this thesis, I refer to the Norwegian contemporary Zen Buddhist practice. While a detailed historical perspective would undoubtedly shed light on current Zen Buddhist practices, I will only include such a perspective when it is directly connected to the contemporary practice. The concept media may appear as an apparent and unequivocal concept, yet the usages and significances of the term ‘media’ have changed radically for centuries, and can refer to quite different cultural and social phenomena. For instance, the concept can be used in order to 1 Henceforth referred to as RZC and NSZBO. 1 explain the development and importance of bookbinding during the reformation, as well as the usage of computers in the 21th century. Considering these obvious dissimilarities, it is necessary to define what media signify in this thesis. I have chosen to define media as various means of communication through mediums. In this thesis, the Internet, especially Facebook and various modes of communication available there, will constitute the main part of the empirical data. I will describe and analyze posts, contents and variations of communication that exist on two pages and one group associated with RZC and NSZBO. Also, webpages, various Internet sources with Buddhist content, books and articles, as well as video sources such as YouTube, will also be referred to. All of these various forms of communication can be categorized as media. These media sources, the analysis of them and how Zen Buddhists utilize them, will constitute the main body of the empirical data, along with interviews of a selected number of members of RZC and NSZBO. The interviews are, however, secondary to the Internet sources, as they will be used to shed light on the empirical data generated from the Internet sources. In order to analyze the empirical data, a suitable conceptual framework is inevitable. Since I will emphasize media’s influence on religion, categories and analytical models derived from both science of religion and media science are required. David L. McMahan has discussed how Buddhism changed when faced with modernity and the Western world from the end of the 18th century and onward. New “hybrid” appearances of Buddhism, both in the West and in the East, that emerged as a result of these encounters, have often been explained by the concept Buddhist modernism. Interestingly, and something that will be further elaborated on later, is the importance the media have had in this process. Today, the media are still
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