Spiritual autobiography

Moreover, because, as G. A. Starr argues, English Protestantism had rejected the "otherworldliness" of Catholicism "and insisted on the compatibility of earthly and spiritual callings," the "utterly mundane activities could be drawn upon to illustrate and enforce religious duties."

Notable among these are titles by Jesuit John J. McNeill, Bothe Feet Firmly Planted in Midair: My Spiritual Journey (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press); Episcopalian priest Malcolm Boyd, Gay Priest, An Inner Journey (New York: St Martin's Press); Evangelical Minister Mel White's Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1995); Chris Glaser, self-described originally as a "fundamental Baptist and biblical literalist", published Uncommon Calling: A Gay Man's Struggle to Serve the Church (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988).

See, for example, the expatriate British writer Christopher Isherwood's "My Guru and His Disciple" (London: Methuen, 1980); Jane Hamilton Merritt's "A Meditator's Diary: A Western woman's unique experiences in Thailand Monasteries" (London: Mandala/Unwin paperbacks, 1986); Irina Tweedie's "Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master (Nevada City: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1986.

Insightful work coming from the contemporary encounter of Western aspirants with Buddhism, includes Stephen Batchelor's "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist" (2011, New York, Spiegel and Grau).

by Belenda Attaway Yamakawa (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002) Of special interest here is the remarkable study by Sarah H. Jacoby, "Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro" (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

Jacoby's study draws on the rare autobiographical and biographical writing of Sera Kandro, "one of the few Tibetan women to record the story of her life."