In this article we engage with and against Foucault's provocation to think about diagrams of subjectivation. With Foucault we take up his meditation on spirituality and propose a Buddhist alternative to Greco-Roman technologies of self. Against Foucault's notion of an "arts of existence" we suggest instead "cultivation of virtue", drawing on, as an example, a famous Buddhist meditation on compassion. We conclude the article by proposing rethinking doctoral supervision in terms of a cultivation of virtue.