Irish 1st Westerner to become Buddhist monk

First Western Buddhist monk: Irish U Dhammaloka (Wisdom Quarterly)

Methinks me should be a monk

The Dharma Bum was the first Westerner to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He chose Theravada Buddhism in Burma (Myanmar), where he was given the name Venerable U Dhammaloka. ("U," pronounced "ooh," is not a name but an honorific title used for monks and mature or men in senior positions in Burma). He was from Dublin, Ireland but -- wandering like a Dharma Bum, he first traveled to California then onto Asia, landing in faraway Mandalay, where he took robe and bowl and made a lot of trouble for the Christian colonial British exploiting India.

Irish documentary about pioneer U Dhammaloka

The Dharma Bum is a feature-length, partially animated documentary film that tells the tantalizing true story of Dubliner Laurence Carroll, who became Venerable U Dhammaloka.

• Any relation to Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland? Of course not, because "Lewis Carroll" is the nom de plume (pen name) for Irish-connected Oxford don Dodgson, the author of classic literature for little Alice Liddell.

Dharma Bum Temple, San Diego

Laurence Carroll was born in Dublin in 1856 and spent his early life as an alcoholic hobo drifter bumming his way across the United States of America.
 

This freethinking, un-Catholic, un-Christian, atheist activist worked the shipping route from San Francisco, California, to Japan.

• Dharma Bum Buddhist Temple, Southern California
• The Dharma Bums by Irish American Buddhist and Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac:

Irish American Buddhist J. Kerouac

Irish American Zen Buddhist and Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac's literary prestige has been growing since 1969. Several previously unseen works of his have been published posthumously. He is recognized for his spontaneous stream of consciousness style of prose. The themes his work covers are mysticism, religion, Buddhism, childhood, poetry and literature, the San Francisco Bay Area (where Irish Dharma Bum U Dhammaloka and British Buddhist Alan Watts came for inspiration) and the New York City of the 1940s and '50s, and life. Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he was not a hippie and mostly remained uninterested in politics [8]. His legacy has lasted generations, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, and the Doors.

• Buddhism in the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)

Dharma Bum Temple Main Hall with guest speaker Ven. Robina Courtin

How Buddhism came to Britain

In Britain, the earliest Buddhist influences came from the Theravada Buddhist traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Interest in them was primarily scholarly to begin with; a Western tradition of study grew up that resulted in the foundation of the Pali Text Society in 1881 founded by T. W. Rhys Davids, which undertook the significant task of translating the Pāli language canon of the Theravada tradition into English. The start of interest in Buddhism as a path-of-practice had been pioneered by the founders of the new syncretic religion Theosophy, namely, the Russian Madame Blavatsky and the American Colonel Olcott. In 1880, they became the first Westerner Buddhists in that they asked to receive the Three Refuges (the Going for Guidance to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha) and the Five Precepts as a formal act of conversion in an ancient ceremony by which one traditionally accepts and becomes a nominal "Buddhist." Burma (now called Myanmar) and Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) were well established Theravada Buddhist countries and colonies of the British Empire. Both colonies were majority Theravada Buddhist. Immigration from the two colonies to the UK would have happened. During the 19th to early 20th centuries, lascar sailors (people from Asia who worked in British ships) came and settled in the UK. Some of the lascars came from the seafaring communities of Burma and Sri Lanka [17]. More

The Dharma Bum found himself on the beach, hungover and homeless, after being kicked off the vessel for drunk and disorderly conduct.

He eventually made his way to Theravada Buddhist Burma, where he was helped by compassionate local Buddhist monks.

After five years as a monastic apprentice, he became the first Western man to ever don the saffron robes of a Theravada Buddhist monk.

• Carroll was not the only amazing Irish-American Buddhist monastic: There was also Zen Buddhist "saint" (bodhisattva) Maura Soshin O'Halloran
• American Buddhist Journal: POEM: "Finnegan's Awake"

Irish Zen Bodhisattva Soshin O'Halloran

Irish-American female Zen Buddhist saint (bodhisattva) in Japan: Soshin O'Halloran

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Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind

*Maura "Soshin" O'Halloran (May 24, 1955–Oct. 22, 1982) was an Irish Zen Buddhist nun [1]. She is known for her book Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, which was posthumously published by her family.

She is also famous for being one of the "first of few Western women allowed to practice in a traditional Japanese Zen monastery" [2].

BIOGRAPHY

Hojo Takatoki Harakiri-Yagura, Tōshō-ji Temple

Soshin (Maura O'Halloran) was born in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, USA in 1955. Her parents moved her to Ireland when she was four years old [3, 4]. Her father was originally from County Kerry, whereas her mother was a native of Maine [4]. In Ireland, young O'Halloran was educated in Loreto College, Foxrock in Dublin and later attended Trinity College Dublin, where she graduated with a joint degree in mathematical economics/statistics and sociology [3]. Shortly after her graduation, [karma and the pull of past lives being what they are] O'Halloran ventured to Japan, where she studied to become a Zen monastic at Tōshō-ji in Tokyo and at Kannon-ji in Iwate Prefecture [3] ("Kannon" being a name for the Virgin Mary of Buddhism, the Goddess of Compassion Kwan Yin). More

An Irish Girl

Irish Zen Buddhist nun Soshin

The snow begins across the mountains

Covers the rice fields

Down below a woman awakens

Her breath is frozen in the early morning

Out on the freezing streets

With bell and bowl she goes

People come to see the face

People come to feel the light

Of an Irish Girl

Everything in the world is new

Everybody I tell wants to know you

Soshin… Soshin…

She washes noodles by the open window

Wet and soft between her fingers

The air of spring blows on her face

And the moment is eternal

Maura sits in the dark womb-like stillness

She’s thinking ‘How can I die or cease to be?

I am eternal, I am Roshi!’

Everything in the world is new

Everybody I tell wants to know you

Soshin… Soshin…

She may not change a blade of grass

Nor light the flame for souls to see

But in this silent Easter morning

She has found a friend in me

Adapted from the expanded edition of Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, Wisdom Publications, with permission (Lion’s Roar)

• Remembering "Irish Zen Saint" Maura O'Halloran | Lion’s Roar

Ven. U Dhammaloka: First Westerner to ordain as a Buddhist monk

I'm glad I became a Buddhist and did so much to spread freethinking against the British Empire.

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The Dharma Bum (documentary)

(Belfast Buddhist, 4/1/16) Venerable Dhammaloka was ordained in Theravada Buddhist Burma (Myanmar) prior to 1900, making him one of the very earliest attested Western Buddhist monks. He was a celebrity preacher, vigorous polemicist, free thinker, and prolific editor in Burma and Singapore between 1900 and his conviction for sedition and appeal in 1910–1911. Drawing on Western atheist writings, he publicly challenged the role of imperial Christian missionaries and by implication the British Empire. His Irish name was Laurence Carroll or Larry O'Rourke or Willam Colvin from Cork and Munster.

UK-occupied Northern Ireland

They gave him the new Buddhist name U Dhammaloka,** and that is just the beginning of the story!

• [**In Burmese U (pronounced "oo") is an honorific that signifies "sir," Dhamma is the Pali spelling of "Dharma," loka means "world." Interestingly, aloka means "light" or "bright whiteness" -- so his name, if pronounced with a long a, signifies suggests "Dharma Light or even White Dharma."]

U Dhammaloka was erased from history. His existence lay dormant for over 100 years. Why? The reasons are explored in the film.

Teach those Brits not to mess with the Celts

This Irishman caused quite a stir in his life, as he singlehandedly took on the might of the Christian British Empire in colonial Burma.

• [George Orwell was also decrying British colonial crimes against humanity in Burma and England for which he wrote Nineteen-Eighty-Four, and he wrote about the city monks of Burma -- eviscerating the layabouts -- in an essay "Shooting an Elephant"].

In the film we discover why he was under constant police surveillance and ultimately had to fake his own death as he transformed himself from an alcoholic bum to the original Dharma Bum. More

• The Dharma Bum - a documentary - Home | Facebook
• Goodbye Columbus, hello St. Brendan | Irish America

The Legend of the 6th Century Irish monk who may have sailed so America (grunge.com)

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Happy St. Paddy's Day?

Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit

The Patrician Roman Patriarch Patty?

As we celebrate Saint Paddy's Day today, one has to wonder why British Protestant Patrick gets so much credit from the Imperial Catholic Church.

• Is it Druid Genocide Day or St. Patrick's Day?

Saint Patrick (Gaelic Pádraig, Latin Patricius, "father of the people") was a 5th-century Romano-British anti-pagan, Christian missionary, and patriarch named bishop of Ireland by an outside entity.

Known as the "Apostle of Ireland," he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints being Brigid of Kildare and Columba. Patrick was never formally canonized [2], having lived before the current laws of the Catholic Church on these matters.

• Is St Patrick's Day a celebration of genocide? (Quora)
• Why pagans don’t celebrate St. Paddy’s Day
• Druid Genocide (Ireland's Folklore and Traditions)
• The 6th century Irish monk who sailed to America (grunge.com)
• Study: “Woke” attitudes linked to anxiety, depression, and a lack of happiness

We may have been better off as pagans.

Nevertheless, he is venerated as a "saint" in the Catholic Church, which also venerates the Buddha as a Catholic saint (St. Josaphat), the Lutheran Church, the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion), and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland [3, 4].

He was a slave in Ireland for years, escaped back to England then seems to have returned to extract his revenge as a patriarch to impose Roman church law on the Emerald Isle.

Patrick is credited with forcing Christianity on Ireland, converting a pagan society in the process, despite evidence of an earlier Christian presence [7].

We defend Catholicism b/c the British don't like it

In Patrick's autobiography, Confessio, when he was 16, he was captured at home in Britain by Irish pirates and taken as a slave to Ireland. He writes that he lived here for six years herding animals before escaping and returning to his England.

After becoming a cleric, he returned to spread Christianity in northern and western Ireland. In later life, he served as a bishop, but little is known about where he worked.

By the 7th century, he had already become the "patron saint of Ireland." His feast day is observed on March 17th, the date of his death not his birth. It is celebrated in Ireland and among the worldwide Irish diaspora as a cultural holiday celebrating all things Irish.

It is hardly as a religious observance nowadays, but in the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation, even if pagans mourn the genocide he wrought upon the island.

Good John Riley's flag of the Mexican regiment

The Irish are so much like the Mexicans in this regard, taken over and thoroughly saturated by the Holy Roman Empire, as if the Church liberated the people when it enslaved them and still tries to rule every aspect of their lives and exact tribute for Rome.

So much is this connection felt that there are Los Patricios ("The Patricks" not Patricians), who were US mercenaries ordered to fight Mexico, but when they understood the fight, led by John Riley, they took the side of Mexico and fought against the US, as anyone who champions the underdog might well have done. More

• Who wrote the Vulgate?
• TheDharmaBum.eu, Dana.IO/thedharmabum; Irishman U Dhammaloka (aka Laurence Carroll); Lion's Roar; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit originally published March 17, 2024
  

HOWL: JuBu Allen Ginsberg's 100th birthday

(RAT Subterranean News) Allen Ginsberg: Buddhism and Telling the Truth

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's 100th birthday is being marked by celebrations around the world – an appreciation of his importance to poetry and how his influence on the medium continues.

• Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: JewBu: Why are so many Jews Buddhist?
• Literary events around the world celebrate the poet Allen Ginsberg's 100th birthday (NPR)
• American Buddhist and Beat Poet Jack Kerouac
• Jack Kerouac's nonfiction book on Buddhism
• AUDIO: Buddhist-Catholic poet Jack Kerouac
• VIDEO: Dharma Bum Temple, San Diego, California

"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg summarized

JuBu Ginsberg's Sunflower Sutra (poem)

(extropyofdays) Allen Ginsberg's modernist poem "Sunflower Sutra"

Nazis invented meth as pharmaceutical Pervitin

"Howl," also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon," is a poem composed by drug-addled Allen Ginsberg (who had shot himself up with methamphetamine or what Hitler's doctor shot up the Fuhrer with under the German pharmaceutical name Pervitin, possibly linked to words like perky and perverted) in 1954–1955.

Poet activist Ginsberg with protestors, Miami

Gay Ginsberg began work on "Howl" in autumn of 1954. He performed it at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in Oct. 1955. Fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books was at the performance and published the work in the 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems.

Howl and Other Poems

Upon its release, Ferlinghetti and City Lights Bookstore Manager (Japanese Buddhist) Shigeyoshi Murao were charged with disseminating obscene literature. Both perverts were arrested.

On Oct. 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene [1], and the heroic publishers were hailed as innovative geniuses and brave publishing mavericks for spotting Ginsberg's talent.

Highly controversial at first and for years excluded from the academic canon, "Howl" has gradually come to be regarded as a great work of 20th-century American literature [2].

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg

(Swingin' Pig) Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg visit Jack Kerouac's grave (1975)

The poem is also closely associated with the group of writers known as the "Beats" or Beat Generation [2,3]. More

• "Sunflower Sutra" (The Poetry Foundation)

The "Sunflower Sutra"

1967 Mantra-Rock Dance Avalon
poster by poet Allen Ginsberg

This poem is an account of a sojourn (trip) with Jack Kerouac in a railroad yard, the discovery of a sunflower covered in dirt and soot from the railroad yard, and the subsequent revelation that this is a metaphor for all humanity: "We are not our skin of grime."

This relates to his vision, an auditory hallucination of poet William Blake reading "Ah, Sunflower": "Blake, my visions." (See also line in Howl: "Blake-light tragedies" and references in other poems).

• Author Emily Sigalow, American JewBu (Princeton U Press)

Manager Shig Murao

The theme of the poem is consistent with Ginsberg's revelation in his original vision of Blake: the revelation that all of humanity is interconnected. (See also the line in "Footnote to Howl": "The world is holy!").

The structure of this poem relates to "Howl" both in its use of the long line and its repetition of the "eyeball kick" (paratactical juxtapositions) at the end. Ginsberg says in relating his thought process after the experiments of "Howl":

"What about a poem with rhythmic buildup power equal to Howl without use of repetitive base to sustain it? The Sunflower Sutra...did that, it surprised me, one long who" [6]. More

St. Paddy's Day at Hollywood Improv (3/17)

Greg Fitzsimmons' Annual St. Patrick's Day Show featuring Sarah Silverman, Caroline Rhea, Laura Kightlinger, Doug Benson, Amber Easton, and special guests (plus a big surprise) at Hollywood Improv (14120714)

LIVE: Hollywood Florida St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2026 | Rain Delay Crowd & Parade Coverage

White female hitchiking to Yosemite

It's a Dharma Bum life, Jay-Z.

Societe US says there are 18 behaviors branded as low class by American society. Some of us are the haves and some are the have-nots, but being "low class" isn’t so much about what we have as much as it is about what we don’t, namely "class." The American caste system isn't as obvious to outsiders as it is to us. Any highschooler learns it. "Social clues," Cage the Elephant tells us, are the key. There are dead-giveaways, habits that tell everyone that our upbringing was not posh, upscale, spoiled, or even pampered.

Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac)

We were at the back of the plane by the bathrooms. We fed on Twinkies instead of cake. We ate Heinz yellow mustard on benches instead of Grey Poupon in cars. We spat like Hock Tua Gal [Hawk Tuah Girl], as Southern as a Tennessee brat in Daisy Dukes. We considered hitching all the way to the greatest National Park in the land, Yo-Semite, now open to Gentiles, too.

This is not about eating junk food all the way to the holy haunts of the Paiute Indians. This is about getting back to the land and running into a meadow or grove until a deer or Sasquatch notices. (Bigfoot is probably high up in the cold hills, not wandering from peak to peak in the summer flush of a late spring and all this Tuolumne River melt into the lazy Merced River of the valley). So mosquitoes and chiggers, mites and ticks are much bigger worries than the park's charismatic megafauna like grizzlies and brown bears.

At the end of the rainbow

Hey, Trashy, you're not riding or dining with us. Keep it movin, and take that knapsack with you.

You’ve known all along…

(Araya Amenti) July 8, 2024: ITALY. Hello and welcome. I'm Araya, and I am here to help you remember who you are and to get what you want out of this human experience. In this space, we talk about all things spirituality, manifestation, consciousness, health, and wellness.

I spent years and years and hundreds of thousands of dollars learning how to heal my body from chronic illness, which ended up being my soul's chosen path to awakening and having me remember who I am.

A new earth is here, and I am honored to be a guide as we shift into this new 5D world. Let's decondition [decolonize] our minds, leave the Matrix behind, and celebrate our uniqueness and authentic truth. Namaste, my friends!

Man and dog live a year in dangerous woods

(RAMIZ IN THE WILD) April 27, 2024: Hello🖐, dear viewers🤩 and subscribers😍to this channel. This time I lived with my canine companion ​​for a year and two months in a very dangerous forest. It turns out that living in the forest for a long time is not a problem; in the forest one can find everything one needs for life. For example, there's water, food, and so on. In short, I built burrowed cave hut in 15 days. The only problem was that the clay took a long time to dry, but I solved this problem by drying it with fire. And I figured out my beloved dog was injured in the forest, but I did everything necessary. I patched up her wound, and she recovered quickly. I show all the rest in the video.

Buddhism in Ireland + "The Miracle Club" (film)

The Journal, 1/16/17; Sony Pictures; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

I'm Green Tara Kwan Yin, and he's the Irish Buddha Scythianmuni the Shakya/Scythian

Becoming a Buddhist in Ireland

(The Journal) Dharmachari ("Dharma Teacher") Vajrashura is one of four full-time teaching staff members at the Dublin Buddhist Centre (DBC), which is a registered charity.

Lawrence Carroll became Ven. Dhammaloka

Along with six other regular volunteers, they teach Buddhist meditation to approximately 600 new students a year, and Buddhism to another 100.

The DBC is the fulcrum of a wider community of 1,500 Buddhists in the Dublin area and has sister communities (or sanghas) in Killaloe, Clare and Westport, Co Mayo.

Dhr. Vajrashura grew up as Sean Boland in the west of Ireland, before coming across Buddhism in the TCD Meditation Society as a theoretical physics graduate.

Now 39, he is a full-time Buddhist teacher and lives with two friends in a small Buddhist men’s community in Dublin 7. There, they meditate at 7:00 am each morning, breakfast together, and go off to work – in his case as manager of the DBC (jrnl.ie/3130287).

ABOUT: TheJournal.ie is an Irish news website that invites its users to shape the news agenda. Read, share, and shape the day’s stories as they happen, from Ireland, the world, and the web. Submit clips to video@thejournal.ie. Stay up to date with all of the latest videos by subscribing to channel. Download our free iOS app (itunes.apple.com). Download free Android app (play.google.com). Twitter: twitter.com/thejournal_ie Facebook: facebook.com/TheJournal.ie Instagram: instagram.com/thejournal_ie Snapchat: thejournal.ie.

The Miracle Club

The King of Ireland (via Imperial Rome)

It's Ireland. You can be Catholic, Roman Catholic, New Catholic or Episcopalian, possibly Protestant, and maybe if you're really lucky Buddhist on the coattails of Lawrence O'Rourke, who became the world's first Western Buddhist monk -- U Dhammaloka -- when he left for the States and onto Asia (Mandalay, Burma).

Go to Lourdes, Ladies. We approve

Will you hold me, Friend? Yes, I'll "hold you like a grudge" (FOB). Directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan. Starring: Laura Linney, Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates. Set in 1967, THE MIRACLE CLUB follows the story of three generations of close friends, Lily (Maggie Smith), Eileen (Kathy Bates), and Dolly (Agnes O'Casey) of Ballygar, a hard-knocks community in Dublin, Ireland, who have one tantalizing dream: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French Catholic town of Lourdes, a place of miracles that draws millions of visitors each year.

Who was the Irish "Dharma Bum" Lawrence Carroll or U Dhammaloka

When the chance to win presents itself, the women seize it. However, just before their trip, their old friend Chrissie (Laura Linney) arrives in Ballygar for her mother's funeral, dampening their good mood and well-laid plans. The women set out on the journey that they hope will change their lives, with Chrissie, a skeptical traveler, joining in place of her mother.

The glamour and sophistication of Chrissie, who has just returned from a nearly 40-year exile in the United States, are not her only distancing traits: Old wounds are reopened along the way, forcing the women to confront their pasts even as they travel in search of a miracle. #TheMiracleClub #OfficialTrailer #SonyClassics