Oriental philosophy cannot possibly be understood if one assumes that
the minds of Orientals are qualitatively different from those of Westerners,
and that it contains some mysterious elements which can never
have a living meaning to men brought up in the West. I regard
Buddhist philosophy, as preached in the Prajñāpāramitā and
argued by Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti as the most likely, or
at least as the least unlikely, of all philosophical attitudes.
I arrived at it by the logical development of elements which
form part of Western tradition for thousands of years, and
I had reached the basic tenets [as shown in SW 1932] long
before I had made a study of the Sanskrit sources.
[Further Buddhist Studies, p. xii]

It was in the shadow of the great historical events of the thirties
that I had my Āśraya-Parāvriti or spiritual rebirth.
I shifted my truth-bearing section of society
from revolutionary commissars to contemplative Buddhist monks
and so my later work is directly continuous with my earlier one.
[The Memoirs of A Modern Gnostic, Part I (1979) p. 37]