The Epilogue argues that, during the first decades of the twenty-first century, the Buddha has become part of Western popular culture, on occasion little more than a commodity on the shelf in the modern supermarket of individual spiritualities. Thus, whether the story of the Buddha is history or legend, fact or fiction, he remains an exemplary human figure, whose life provides a ‘romantic’ ideal to be followed. As the Oriental ‘other’, now acceptably disenchanted, the Buddha is a symbolic antidote to the ills of modernity in the West. The disenchanted Buddha is thus able to serve as the foundation of a new Western naturalised Buddhism. Naturalised Buddhism provides technologies of self-formation for everyday life in this world. Here, the Buddha is a this-worldly sage and the philosopher of a new form of human consciousness focused upon the practices of meditation and mindfulness.

This chapter considers Zen monastic memoirs that describe experiences in a Japanese monastery. Janwillem van de Wetering’s The Empty Mirror (1973) was one of the first extended autobiographical accounts of the quest for enlightenment. Van de Wetering wrote about experiences off as well as on the meditation cushion and emphasized failure, not the attainment of satori. Three later travel memoirs by Maura O’Halloran, David Chadwick, and Gesshin Claire Greenwood also depict a lengthy sojourn in a Zen monastery and a frustrating search for self-transformation. Yet all these authors experience a form of unselfing and an altered understanding of the Dharma and Buddhist practice. In each of these four narratives, the ambiguous failure of the quest for enlightenment reveals how the author’s life was nonetheless transformed by Zen monastic practice. Departure from the monastery means that selfless practice may take place anywhere and is not a matter of achievement or accomplishment.

This chapter examines Thomas Merton’s encounters with Buddhism during his 1968 journey in Asia, as recorded in his Asian Journal. He hoped learning from Asian traditions would increase his commitment as a Christian monk. Merton was deeply moved by encounters with Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama, a stark confrontation with the mountain Kanchenjunga in Nepal, and an ecstatic aesthetic experience at the massive sculptures at Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. He recorded several moments of unselfing and used the concepts of anicca (impermanence) and anatman (no-self) to understand them. Merton’s example of integrating Buddhist ideas with theistic faith is paralleled by two other Christians and a Jew: William Johnston, Bardwell Smith, and Rodger Kamenetz. Profoundly influenced by Asian journeys, these writers use Buddhist metaphors and stories to explore problems of selfhood. They discern ways in which their own theistic religious tradition is analogous in crucial ways to Buddhist no-self in challenging egotism.