Stanford University Japanese Buddhism Lectures 2010-11: Dhammaloka in Tokyo: The Hidden History of Early Western Buddhist Monastics

The 'Irish Buddhist' U Dhammaloka, until recently lost to history, was ordained in the Burmese tradition probably in the 1880s. One of the earliest Western Buddhist monks, he was a Buddhist revivalist celebrated throughout South and East Asia in the early 1900s. Dhammaloka was a working-class Irishman with limited formal education but he was an effective orator and a tireless campaigner; for Buddhism and temperance, against Christianity. Remarkably, U Dhammaloka was the only foreign Buddhist to speak, alongside Shimaji Mokurai and other prominent Japanese Buddhist clerics and intellectuals, at the founding of the 'International Young Men's Buddhist Association' in Tokyo in 1902. Who was U Dhammaloka, why did he go to Japan in 1902, what impact did the Japanese visit have on his subsequent activities in South-east Asia - and what are Dhammaloka's links with San Francisco?