European Philosophy during the modern times has had a strange fascination with the philosophies from the East, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the earliest to critically and passionately examine Hinduism and Buddhism. Emil Cioran, influenced by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer as well as Buddhism, came to an even profounder sense of pessimism about existence. He is truly the late figure of a tradition which combined pessimism with deep and at times enflamed reflections about existence and non-existence. However, the common theme between Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Cioran is a sense of distant fascination with Buddhism and its ideas of nirvana as well as a deep-rooted lament for the cosmic and spiritual distance that separates them from looking at life through the lens of an enlightened Buddha. The importance of Emil Cioran is that he belongs to a uniquely disturbing period of history but is also caught at a moment when the extremes of a pessimistic philosophy had been captured by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. His early writings carry the mark of both writers, but with maturity he had enough personal and philosophical experience to craft his own writing style, which paradoxically brings together the lament for a world that will never return to anything close to innocence or enlightenment and a scepticism in his own capacities to perceive the workings of reality and therefore questioning the subtle deceptions of human belief and enlightenment. This paper will examine Cioran's reflections on Buddhism and the manner in which they carry on the paradoxical fascination with and lack of attainment of nirvana in the modern European philosophical tradition.