Purple skin is a popular flesh tone where I am going. I’m meeting with Jeremy Nickel, an executive at Tripp, a VR meditation app that offers “mesmerizing worldscapes,” “guided visualizations,” and “captivating breathing exercises.” He’s agreed to give me a guided tour of the various landmarks in their metaverse.
The first place Nickel takes me is to the Zen garden. A digital breeze gently blows through the trees around the garden. There are stone benches and cairns weathered by the elements. Off to one side is a peaceful looking zendo.
“This is one of our most popular spaces,” reports Nickel. “It’s modeled after the backyard of one of our designer’s grandparents in Taiwan. We also have ancient ruins and a Tibetan temple in the mountains.”
I turn around in a full circle, taking it all in. It’s not perfect. Nobody would mistake this for the real deal, but there is a certain tranquility to the space. It’s peaceful enough to make me forget that I’m wearing a brick-like pair of VR goggles on my face and holding controllers in my hands.
Although virtual reality has been around for decades, it only recently entered the cultural arena with the arrival of affordable headsets. While VR remains almost totally the domain of the gaming industry, a few contemplative organizations like Tripp have carved out spaces where VR users can learn about and practice meditation. Curious, I borrowed a VR headset to explore a few of these meditation
