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99 cent Holiday Sale! Plus reviews, podcasts and other thoughts

Happy Holidays!

I’ve just lowered the price of the Facebuddha ebook to 99 cents on all platforms. The sale price will be good until January 17th! Please share with all your networks! I’m trying to generate buzz and hopefully some more reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads! I just got my first 5 star review on Amazon – from someone I don’t even personally know 🙂 I also got a great review on Clinical Psychiatry News! It feels good that my book is doing some good in the world – I hope it will inform, entertain and please you as well. (And please do post a review after you’ve read Facebuddha – thanks!)

Purchase book!!
Amazon Kindle ebook and Hardcover
iBooks
Nook
Kobo
Barnes and Noble Hardcover
IndieBound

I also started a podcast – currently four episodes are up.

(1) an interview with playwright Kim Chinh (Reclaiming Vietnam) ;
(2) my conversation with psychiatrist and former ED of the S.F. Jung Institute F.B. Steele;
(3) in conversation with therapists and college students at SFSU
(4) in conversation with award-winning journalist Bernice Yeung.

You can stream these podcasts on Stitcher, Soundcloud and iTunes.

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Some thoughts on social media

Former Facebook insiders are raising red flags about the world’s largest social network. Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former vice president for user growth, recently said “we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” He advised that people take a “hard break” from social media. His comments echoed Facebook founding president Sean Parker, who said social media provides a “social validation feedback loop (‘a little dopamine hit…because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post’) that’s exactly the thing a hacker like myself would come up with because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” Palihapitiya concluded “you are being programmed.”

Are these fears overblown? What is social media doing to us as individuals and as a society? With over 70% of American teens and adults on Facebook, and over 1.2 billion users visiting the site daily, with the average person spending over 90 minutes a day on all social media platforms combined, it’s vital that we gain wisdom about the social media genie – because it’s not going back into the bottle. Our wish to connect with others and express ourselves may indeed come with unwanted side effects.

Facebook “addiction” (yes, there’s a scale for this) looks similar on MRI scan in some ways to substance abuse and gambling addictions (specifically in amygdala-striatal activation).⁠ Some even go to extremes to chase the highs of likes and followers. 26 year old Wu Yongning recently fell to his death in pursuit of selfies precariously taken atop skyscrapers. This tragedy illuminates both the thrilling peaks of popularity we all can feel when gratified with likes, shares and comments, and the horrendous chasms that await us when we feel unheard, unseen or even bullied online. One chasm we face is envy. Psychology Today devoted its November/December 2017 cover story to online social comparison. Envy is nothing if not corrosive of the social fabric, turning friendship into rivalry, hostility and grudges. The medium is the message, and social media tugs at us to view each other’s “highlight reels,” and all too often, we feel ourselves lacking by comparison. This can be fuel for personal growth, if we can turn envy into admiration, inspiration and self-compassion, but is often cause for dissatisfaction with oneself and others.

Also…

Ta-Nehisi Coates just deleted his Twitter account …. and I know other prominent people who have deactivated their social media accounts…. What will you choose to do in the New Year?

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Read Facebuddha to explore these issues in depth!

Warmly,

Ravi

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Martin Luther + Facebook = Facebuddha

Text of event on October 31, 2017:
(Video on YouTube and Facebook)

500 years ago today, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, protesting the corruption of papal indulgences, and thus birthing the Protestant reformation. Today, I’m posting my book, Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks, to the door of our social media church to protest what social media is doing to our minds and hearts, and calling for a return to the values of compassion, relationship and community. Social media, and technology, have become a new religion, with evangelists and disciples. We beg for our friends’ indulgences with our posts, but our relationships have become monetized for the profit of the few. We may hope for transcendence through our online communion, but in fact we are taken farther from our hearts. Social media surfaces the question of belonging, but does not solve it. Depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidality are increased by our time on social media. Social media are a platform for cyberbullying and trolling, even by our president, who sets a bad example but also epitomizes the worst possibilities of online interactions, rampaging across our boundaries of mind and spirit, agonizing and polarizing the nation, causing us to lose sight of our common humanity.

Social media are our auxiliary amygdalae, priming us for fight-or-flight responses to the cataclysmic barrage of traumatic events, fake news, and threats to our identities. The social network is a race to the bottom of our brainstems. We think we’ll heal ourselves online, but all our communal wounds (of racism, sexism and homophobia, for example) are empathic failures, failures of love and compassion. Healing comes through real world presence and relationship. By making relationship superficial, we deepen our divide. Society has become more polarized and mistrustful. Social media is ultimately a boon not to transcendence of the self-centered ego, but boosts self-centeredness itself. Our attentions and priorities are narrowed. Our curiosity, openness, ability to consider differing opinions, and ability to reason calmly suffer. The most triggering and inflammatory posts are most likely to get our attention and go viral. Facebuddha is my spiritual memoir, cultural analysis and odyssey across this alluring technological sea, and home to the heart, where I find a measure of transcendence through the cultivation of relationship and love, mindfulness and compassion.

Social media and technology are not just media. They are a new religion. Facebook is bigger than the Catholic Church. Our Tweets and Posts are 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 is 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?

Read Facebuddha, and find out. Cultivate a path to transcendence, peace and healing, and beyond suffering.

More details, purchase links and an animated book trailer at facebuddha.co.

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10/10/17 – Facebuddha meets the world!

Facebuddha launched officially on October 10th, 2017. I purposely chose Thelonious Monk’s birthday – for reasons that will become apparent when you get to the end of my book!

Life is jazz – help me improvise and create buzz!

“The only instruction is kindness.” Ravi Chandra celebrates the publication of Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks! The animated book trailer is up on Facebook and YouTube – please watch and share! Facebuddha is available on Kindle, iBooks, Nook and Kobo with hardcover now available at Amazon and B&N. CAAM members are invited to use discount code SUPERFAN for $5 off a hardcover copy of the book at Ravi’s Facebuddha launch events on October 23rd and 28th, the first with a conversation with F.B. Steele, M.D., former Executive Director of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. On Wednesday, November 8th at 7:30 pm, Ravi will be in conversation with journalist Bernice Yeung at Booksmith’s Bindery. Five years in the making, Facebuddha is a rich Asian American memoir, a state-of-the-art exploration of psychological research about social media, and an engaging introduction to Buddhism. Tamlyn Tomita says Facebuddha is “a very personal, often funny, warmly intelligent, thoughtful and heartfelt journey to transcendence!” Other reviewers call it “inspiring,” “magnificent,” “breathtakingly personal,” and “an invitation to depth and personal growth.” Ravi is depending on word-of-mouth, so please share, and read this great book!