Experiences of 'presence' are common in religion. This essay attempts to approach presence along phenomenological lines, arguing that the pluralism of the phenomena and contexts referred to is not an obstacle to a methodologically open dialogue between different experiences. Despite the impersonalism of Buddhist conceptions of ultimate reality, personal presences play a considerable role even in two scriptures devoted to evoking this ultimate emptiness. Conversely the vibrant personalism of Biblical presentations of the divine does not exclude the possibility of a Buddhist critique and tempering of them, even if the two styles of approaching ultimate reality cannot be expected to coincide.