Western Buddhist travel narratives are autobiographical accounts of a journey to a Buddhist culture. Dozens of such narratives have since the 1970s describe treks in Tibet, periods of residence in a Zen monastery, pilgrimages to Buddhist sites and teachers, and other Asian odysseys. The best known of these works is Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard; further reflections emerge from thirty writers including John Blofeld, Jan Van de Wetering, Thomas Merton, Oliver Statler, Robert Thurman, Gretel Ehrlich, and Bill Porter. The Buddhist concept of 'no-self' helps these authors interpret certain pivotal experiences of 'unselfing' and is also a catalyst that provokes and enables such events. The writers' spiritual memoirs describe how their journeys brought about a new understanding of Buddhist enlightenment and so transformed their lives. Showing how travel can elicit self-transformation, this book is a compelling exploration of the journeys and religious changes of both individuals and Buddhism itself.

About the Contributor(s): John D. Barbour is Professor of Religion and Boldt Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities at St. Olaf College. He is the author of scholarly essays and four books, including Versions of Deconversion: Autobiography and the Loss of Faith (1994) and The Value of Solitude: The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography (2004).

Most people feel ambivalent about solitude, both loving and fearing it depending on how they experience being alone at certain points in their lives. In "The Value of Solitude, " John Barbour explores some of the ways in which experiences of solitude, both positive and negative, have been interpreted as religiously significant. He also shows how solitude can raise ethical questions as writers evaluate the virtues and dangers of aloneness and consider how social interaction and withdrawal can most meaningfully be combined in a life.

Barbour's work differs from previous books about solitude in two ways: it links solitude with ethics and spirituality, and it approaches solitude by way of autobiography. Barbour ranges from the early Christian and medieval periods to the twentieth century in examining the varieties of solitary experience of writers such as Augustine, Petrarch, Montaigne, Gibbon, Rousseau, Thoreau, Thomas Merton, and Paul Auster. For many authors, the process of writing an autobiography is itself conceived of as a form of solitude, a detachment from others in order to discover or create a new sense of personal identity. Solitude helps these authors to reorient their lives according to their moral ideals and spiritual aspirations.

"The Value of Solitude" both traces the persistence and vitality of the theme of solitude in autobiography and shows how the literary form and structure of autobiography are shaped by ethical and religious reflection on aloneness. This work should appeal to scholars in the fields of religious studies and theology, to literary critics and specialists in autobiography, and to readers interested in the experience of solitude and its moral and spiritual significance.

In Versions of Deconversion John Barbour examines the work of a broad selection of authors in order to discover the reasons for their loss of faith and to analyze the ways in which they have interpreted that loss. For some the experience of deconversion led to another religious faith, some turned to atheism or agnosticism, and others used deconversion as a metaphor or analogy to interpret an experience of personal transformation. The loss of faith is closely related to such vital ethical and theological concerns as the role of conscience, the assessment of religious communities, the dialectical relationship between faith and doubt, and the struggle to reconcile faith with intellectual and moral integrity. This book shows the persistence and the vitality of the theme of deconversion in autobiography, and it demonstrates how the literary form and structure of autobiography are shaped by ethical critique and religious reflection. Versions of Deconversion should appeal at once to scholars in the fields of religious studies and theology who are concerned with narrative texts, to literary critics and specialists on autobiography, and to a wider audience interested in the ethical and religious significance of autobiography.