The dominant voices in early Western encounters with Buddhism adapted the religion to their own purposes: romanticism, esotericism, an emphasis on scientific religion (at the cost of the history of Catholicism), and a form of social capital. Even those who were ordained as Buddhist monks seemed to look more to their Western audience back home than their Asian hosts. An exception to this is the Irish Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka, an illiterate working-class Catholic man who ended his career as a sailor while in Rangon, Myanmar, to be ordained at a local temple. He then became a renowned preacher among the Burmese, drawing crowds of thousands. What did he preach, and how did he find common cause with the locals who supported him?
In this talk, Balliol College Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies Kate Crosby will explore the book The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire (2020) and examine how common concerns were able to unite subjects of British colonialism across the globe.
This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative at Georgetown University with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the series Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.
