The Magic Circle as Enso: A Zen Buddhist Approach to Perception and Virtual Worlds
The bifurcation of the virtual and the real, for considerations of both perception and value judgements, often downplays the virtual. This Western privileging of the ontology of the “real,” however, creates a sticky situation for participation in virtual worlds. Instead of presupposing the heightened status of the “real,” one can alternatively suggest that the “real” is no more ontologically significant than the “virtual.” This leveling approach to the virtual and the real is best realized through Zen Buddhist phenomenology.
Zen Buddhism insists that the world is Maya (illusion) which, in Zen specifically, is not a binary: one exists in Maya and must recognize this truth or reject it. This paper will expand upon the Zen Buddhist approach to perception as illusion, applying this framework to the conundrums of perception in virtual worlds in two ways. First, Zen Buddhism denies the conceptual difference between both "I" and "that" and one's self-perception and the perception of other things. While accepting this phenomenal flattening is the catalyst for enlightenment, it also creates a phenomenal foundation from which to describe experience and action within player-character systems. Second, Zen Buddhism absorbs the Daoist belief in “the treating of things as they are” in every present moment in the systematic denial of the identification of any “thing” through time. To understand the world is to understand it through the various iterations of perception present in things as they evolve across every present moment. This approach to ethics, in conjunction with the prior phenomenal foundation, circumvents any perceived barriers, including the virtual. Thus, Zen Buddhist phenomenology, when combined with virtual world theories, provides a framework that allows for more robust responses to ethical, evaluative, and epistemological concerns regarding participation in virtual worlds.