Digital Merit: A Case Study of a Chinese Buddhist Meditation Group on WeChat During the Early Outbreak of Covid-19 in China

ABSTRACT While most academics regard virtual religious communities to be secondary to in-person religious communities, the virtual Buddhist sangha served as a full and complete social infrastructure that provides purpose to life and spiritual consolation to its members. From the outbreak of the Covid-19 from March to May in 2020, this paper investigates how a Chinese Buddhist group based in Beijing practices Theravada meditation on the WeChat social media platforms. This paper, based on online ethnography and informal interviews, argues that digital media is a significant arena for Chinese Buddhists to conduct Buddhist rituals, transmit Buddhist ideas, generate and accumulate Buddhist merits, and build alternative cyber-Buddhist economies. This paper also highlights that Buddhist groups are continuously growing and rising as highly united and community-oriented digital sanghas within current China’s technoculture context.