Burma's most esteemed American monk

Pat Macpherson and, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly based on Burmese article by Wei Yan Aung translated by Thet Ko Ko, Irrawaddy Times (irrawaddy.com, May 25, 2020)

The sad day Burma's most esteemed foreign monk passed away

RANGOON, Burma - Today in 1966, Italian-American Buddhist monk and missionary Ven. U Lokanatha (who was born Salvatore Cioffi in 1897 and raised in Brooklyn, New York) passed away in Pyin Oo Lwin (Maymyo, Mandalay region). He dedicated his life to promoting Buddhism worldwide.

• Brooklyn Bhikkhu: How Salvatore Cioffi became Ven. Lokanatha (Philip Deslippe, researchgate.net)*

Inspired by the Dhammapada, the "Sayings of the Buddha," New York University graduate in chemistry Cioffi became interested in Buddhism and entered the monastic order in Burma in 1925 at the age of 28.

• The first Westerner to ordain as a Buddhist monk was the Irish freethinker from California Laurence Carroll, who became Ven. U Dhammaloka

Irish Laurence Carroll was the first Western monk.

From his base in Burma, the Italian-American monk traveled to many countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka, Italy, France, and the United States, promoting Buddhism.

When World War II broke out, he was in British India and like other Europeans abroad, he was confined by British authorities in a prison camp, where he introduced some of his fellow prisoners to Buddhism. He also organized a dramatic 96-day hunger strike to demand his religious rights as a Buddhist, until he was eventually forcibly fed by the jailers.

Ananda Metteyya (Elizabeth J. Harris)

He was later incarcerated for seven days in France for collecting alms, which many misunderstand to be begging. [It is offering others the opportunity to volunteer to support and thereby make merit by cultivating charity called dana.]

Although U Lokanatha (Cioffi) preached widely and wrote numerous books about Buddhism, the compassionate vegetarian spent much of his time meditating in caves and forests.

As such he garnered a higher esteem than his predecessor, the foreign monk and English Buddhist missionary Ananda Metteyya (Charles Henry Allan Bennett), and the British writer in Burma George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Burmese Days, and 1936's "Shooting an Elephant").

• 

  The Awakening of the West

  Allan Bennett, a colleague of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, received the name "Ananda Metteyya" in British Ceylon (Sri Lanka) when he ordained as a Buddhist monk, studying and practicing in the East. He was the second Englishman to become a Theravada Buddhist monk (bhikkhu) and was instrumental in introducing Buddhism to England [as the PTS scholars had done since at least 1881, modeled on EETS of 1864], where he established the first Buddhist mission in the UK (WQ, Wiki, Stephen Batchelor's The Awakening of the West, p. 40).

The Religion of Burma (Bennett)

U Lokanatha attracted many devotees as he crossed Burma and asked spiritual questions of senior monks who were widely considered to be enlightened (arhats), those awakened and thereby freed from the endless cycle of rebirth and suffering.

The Italian-American monk lived in Burma for many decades, moving from the colonial period to post-independence and military domination. He passed from cancer at the age of 68.

• Buddhism in Southeast Asia
  

*The Italian-American monk from Brooklyn

Bennett, Buddhist in England

(Philip Deslippe) BIOGRAPHY: Salvatore Cioffi, who became Venerable Lokanatha (1897–1966), was born in Italy and raised in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

After becoming a Buddhist in his late-20s, U Lokanatha travelled to Burma, took ordination as a monk, and began a remarkable 40 year career as a writer, lecturer, organizer, and Buddhist "missionary" throughout South Asia and the world.

U Lokanatha garnered various responses. They are contextualized in the different cultural spheres in which he operated, from the anti-colonial Buddhist revival in Burma to the mocking indifference U Lokanatha found in the United States.

Scholarship on modern Buddhism, particularly recent work on the Irish monk, who first traveled to California then Asia, U Dhammaloka [Laurence Carroll], is used to situate U Lokanatha's life and its facets of conservative reformer and transnational actor.

Finally, an account of the source material used to reconstruct the life of U Lokanatha is employed.

It offers a practical methodological explanations for his absence from conventional narratives of modern Buddhism and what his inclusion along with other figures might mean in the future. More