There was an Irish Buddhist monk in 1800s?

A. Turner, L. Cox, B. Bocking; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire

By Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, Brian Bocking (4.9 out of 5 stars with 14 ratings)

The Irish Buddhist is the biography of an extraordinary Irish emigrant to the USA, sailor, and migrant worker who became a Theravada Buddhist monk in Burma.

He was an anti-colonial activist in early 20th-century Asia. Born in Dublin in the 1850s, [Mr. Laurence Carroll, who became the Buddhist monk] U Dhammaloka energetically challenged the values and power of [Christian missionaries in] the British Empire and scandalized the colonial establishment of the 1900s.

He rallied and energized Buddhists across Asia, set up schools, and argued down [debated and defeated] Christian missionaries -- often using Western atheist arguments.

He was arrested and tried for sedition, tracked by police and intelligence services, and died at least twice.

His story illuminates the forgotten margins and interstices of British imperial power, the complexities of class, ethnicity, and religious belonging in colonial Asia, and the fluidity of identity in the high Victorian period.

Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism's remaking into a world religion has been told "from above," highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers, and ecclesiastical hierarchies.

More realistic map of Ireland

By turns fraught, hilarious, pioneering, and improbable, U Dhammaloka's adventures "from below" highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia.

Through this Irishman's story, Irish authors Alicia Turner, Brian Bocking, and Laurence Cox offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas [populations that have left their homeland], transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements.

U Dhammaloka's dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.