Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks

by Ravi Chandra

Winner of the 2017 Nautilus Silver Award for Religion/Spirituality of Eastern Thought!

Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks is a rich modern Asian American cross-cultural memoir of relationship online and off, an exploration of psychological research about social media, and an engaging introduction to Buddhism. We are who happens to us, and what we make of that happening. Who do we become when we try to relate online? What happens to our mind and heart? Ravi Chandra is a psychiatrist and Buddhist who values conversation, relationship and their ultimate love and the feeling of society. In these politically charged and divided times, how can we connect? Social media offers many inspiring possibilities. Facebook has become popular because we need belonging, meaning and self-expression. But our time on social media is a bardo, or dream-realm, that has traps for our habitually and unconsciously self-centered egos, which Chandra describes thoughtfully and with humor.

We have a Find my iPhone app - but we need to find our "I". Who am I, and who do I become when I engage on social media? How do I come to myself and my highest, most transcendent possibilities? How do I cultivate wisdom, compassion and love in this shrinking world that threatens to tear itself apart?

Chandra writes, "Social media is not just a medium. It is a new religion. The Tweet is our Call to Prayers. We thumb our Phones like Rosaries. Food Porn is our Communion and our Offering to the Cloud. The Status Update is our Sermon on the Mount. The Selfie our personal Anointment and Beatification. Facebook Messenger is our Messiah. The Apple Store is our modern Cathedral, our Silicon Sanctuary. New Emoji are released to the fanfare of a new Pope." Where is this religion taking us?

Thoughtful, humorous, engaging and enlightening, Facebuddha will be a conversation starter for years to come.

A journey through the wilds of relationships, from a rooftop in Hanoi to a village in India, from the streets of San Francisco and Japan to the blue Wall of Facebook, culminating in transformative spiritual experience. Facebuddha will make you smile, laugh and think differently about the world we share.


"I heartily recommend Facebuddha, a wonderfully written, exciting and at times elegiac and rhapsodic presentation of the potentials and difficulties of connecting in relationship - especially in our modern age of technology and as seen through a Buddhist lens. Ravi Chandra is a wonderful storyteller, a psychiatrist, a Buddhist student and teacher, an Asian American, and an able, eloquent writer with the capacity and personal experience to address all the contemporary issues this book brings together. I think Facebuddha will be inspiring to many, many people."
Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D., Buddhist teacher and author
Co-founder, Spirit Rock Meditation Center

"Facebuddha is both personal journey and social commentary, a good-hearted meander across cultural, artistic and occupational worlds that explores a deep concern for our modern dilemmas with the perspective of a devoted Buddhist."
Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., Buddhist teacher and author
Co-founder Spirit Rock Meditation Center

"Facebuddha is magnificent, a breathtakingly personal work that combines memoir, media commentary, Buddhist practicum and depth psychology. Like Martin Luther's theses, these chapters are nailed on the door of the Cathedral of Technology asking us to look beyond our screens by way of reforming contemporary indulgences. As we do so our world moves beneath the surface sheen and towards the interior. Ravi Chandra's effervescent prose locates compassion, in his own soul and in the soul of humanity, in real world relationships endangered by modernity. "
F.B. Steele, M.D., psychiatrist and teacher
Former Executive Director, C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco
(see facebuddha.co and hardcover page for more)

485 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2017

Reviews

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good book, I could do without the India talk. I do like the Buddha sayings, cause don't all that make sense? This was a really long book however very interesting and thought provoking. This book brings up reasons not to be on social media and also reasons why people do. We all have heard of Catfishing, videos of suicides, police shooting, and what they can do to people that witness these things sometimes by accident. But scarred for life. That social media exploits us and probably sells us. Exploits us in a way that we could get robbed while on vacation because we post it, maybe items in our background pics seem appealing. Exploits us in ways of bullying, relying on likes and comments to make us feel good, build us up. The people who intentional friend request just to check up on ex-lovers and ex-friends, I've done this. I've got mad at my children because they would skip liking something I would put on their wall and they would whine back that it's just fb. I've had people ask me to unfriend someone they didn't like. I find myself thinking well isn't this my fb? The Author is right in so many ways, she made a lot of sense on so many points. One thing that stuck out for me is when you're off social media you seem more happy, but on social media seems to make you angry and have low self worth. It's nice to see what everyone is up to like births, marriages, funny pics and videos. This book is like a self help book and makes you look at social media in a totally different view. I know I will be a lot different in the future on how I post and like. Social media is very intrusive and really opened my eyes to this phenomenon.
Thank you so much to the Author for your honest, eye-openness words in this world that can be selfish, and downright mean. I recommend this book for anyone who is on social media or is thinking about joining.

Thank you Pacific Heart Books and Net Gallery.

Cherie'

[Paula K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exploring how the cybernetic labyrinth of social media frequently functions as a magnifying medium for delusions, anger, and greed, Facebuddha is both a clarion call and an antidote to the alienation coursing through cyberspace. Dr. Chandra administers the cure by taking it himself. Offering up his own vulnerability through engaging stories and thought-provoking poetry, he enables readers to connect with him and with themselves. He weaves together a broad range of insights and experiences, including poignant reflections on tender moments with his mother that beckon us to enter into the gentle pools that ripple through life. Dr. Chandra shares his wit and wisdom on how to navigate life in a way that cultivates laughter and compassion. Facebuddha is an invitation to “make Buddha.”

––Paula Arai, Ph.D., author of Women Living Zen and Bringing Zen Home

[Jim Razinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a review copy of this from the author through LibraryThing in December, and it took me a little while to read because...

...it's long! And more than a little uneven, though I gather that is by intent - there is one particular passage relating a tour of India that alternates between metaphor and actual life that was unsteady (it also happened to be the longest essay) and took a bit for me to get through. Chandra waxes sappy on a few occasions, for example:

If Facebook didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. Facebook, or its successor social network, is likely here to stay. Unless, of course, we outgrow our need for social networks and become, instead, a fullfledged, IRL Beloved Community. Until then, Facebook will placate the empty nooks of our communal longing, our desperate wish to not be alone, our wish to be seen, our wish to see, our wish to be heard, our wish to hear, our need to stay in touch, somehow, someway.

As the replacement for "book" would intimate, Dr. Chandra weaves Buddhism through out his narrative, and I expected this going in. Even though I've examined the religion and found too many elements to be unpalatable, I chose to request the book anyway. And many of those unpalatabilities (red squiggle says that's not a word...yet) cropped up ("The Buddha's teachings give us the tools to help us understand ourselves and go beyond suffering.")

In the essay Narcissism: The Opposite of Belonging, Chandra says

Reasons we use social media:
1.Belonging and a quest for secure attachment
2.Self presentation and a desire to be noticed
3.Curiosity and desire to experiment
4.Desire or lust for connections

Those may well be, but his framing it that way allows him to make a point that I don't see and disagree with.

I also took issue with this rant:

Social media is not just a medium. It is a new religion. The Tweet is our Call to Prayers. We thumb our Phones like Rosaries. Food Porn is our Communion and our Offering to the Cloud. The Status Update is our Sermon on the Mount. The Selfie our personal Anointment and Beatification. Facebook Messenger is our Messiah. The Apple Store is our modern Cathedral, our Silicon Sanctuary. New Emoji are released to the fanfare of a new Pope. But is social media the temple of the self, the shrine of personality, or is it what its supporters say it is: the best chance for humanity to come together, the best possibility for us to transcend self-centeredness?

Rather extreme.

I'm not sure Dr. Chandra accomplishes his subtitle goal. He says "Even when I'm on Facebook, I'm not on Facebook." to which I mentally responded, "Even when I'm not on Facebook, I'm on Facebook." (By that I mean that my stuff is there even when I'm not...not that I'm thinking about it when I'm not on.) He talks about the experience being an addiction to which we are pretty much inured, clicking ad infinitum down rabbit holes (my words, not his) and I submit that once in, we're in regardless of participation. I see what he's saying, but also that unwitting contributions will tie us even if we detach. Maybe that's the transcendence?

I am grateful for the opportunity to read this and stretch my mental boxes, though I found much of the book to be non sequitur. Still, here's some of the best that he says:

How do you make more cortical relationships? Here’s my sense of it.
1.Notice other people; relate to them, think about them and their needs, as well as your own.
2.Care for yourself and others.
3.Cultivate love.
4.Keep creating yourself, while letting go of self-centeredness, greed and hatred.

Now, that's something I can get behind.

[Louise Foerster · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted so badly to like this book. Much of my reading centers on spiritual, transcendence subjects. Living in a time when so many faces are frowning into a tiny flat screen, I felt like this book would help cast a light, show a way forward to embrace the now and be present with omnipresent social networks. Alas, this was not to be. For me, right now, this book is thick, unreadable prose. Maybe it's me. I don't think I'm the reader the writer was looking for. So be it.