The Irish Buddhist

Alicia Turner, Associate Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies, York University, Toronto; Laurence Cox, Associate Professor of Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth; Brian Bocking, Professor Emeritus of the Study of Religions, University College Cork;

The three authors came together around their fascination with this many-sided Irish Buddhist.

Alicia Turner, Associate Professor of Humanities and Religious studies, York University Toronto is a Religious Studies scholar specializing in modern Burmese Buddhism, nationalism and secularism.

Laurence Cox is Associate Professor of Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth, a specialist in social movements and a historian of Buddhism in Europe, especially Ireland.

Brian Bocking is Emeritus Professor of the Study of Religions, University College Cork, and previously Professor of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London. He has written widely on the academic study of religions and East Asian religions.

Together with colleagues around the world they have spent the past ten years tracking down Dhammaloka's life.

"The Irish Buddhist—humane and absorbing—ensures that Dhammaloka will be accorded some delayed recognition, even as his story ends in almost cosmic anticlimax." -- Tunku Varadarajan, New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute, The Wall Street Review

"This is a remarkable account of the life of Irishman Lawrence Carroll... The three authors, all authorities on Buddhism, have spent a decade of digital and archive-based scholarship recovering and discovering pieces of evidence in this "plebeian intellectual" in an attempt to fill out the blanks in his life.... The authors have done an immense job in textual and religious sleuthing to diligently ressurect the many lives of the elusive Dhammaloka." -- Joseph Woods, The Irish Times

"The Irish Buddhist"—humane and absorbing—ensures that Dhammaloka will be accorded some delayed recognition, even as his story ends in almost cosmic anticlimax." -- Tunku Varadarajan, New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute, The Wall Street Review

"We are greatly indebted to the splendid collaborative research of Professors Turner, Cox, and Bocking, which frequently demanded academic detective work of a very high order. They also deserve our gratitude for their superb contextualisation of religious belief and practice in terms of their relationships with the overarching determining powers of empire. Though this is a work of scholarship which will undoubtedly attract specialists, it is written with a light touch and will certainly appeal also to a wide range of readers.Let us hope that before long we will have The Irish Buddhist: The Movie!" -- Tadhg Foley, NUI Galway, Dublin Review of Books

"This is a wonderfully readable book that stands out for the depth and range of research behind it and adds an additional dimension to contemporary explorations of the movement of ideas and anti-colonial movements." -- Thomas E Kingston

"...[a] deeply researched and fascinating biography" -- Taylor McNeil, Tufts University, TuftsNow

"Turner, Cox and Bocking apply sophisticated analyses of archives and cutting-edge technology. Their footnotes go beyond dutiful documentation to elaborate needed background, making The Irish Buddhist blissfully accessible, always welcome amidst so much academic aridity ... The Irish Buddhist is a thoughtfully woven tale of a character long relegated to history's margins." -- John L. Murphy, DeVry University, Spectrum Culture

"The book, The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the Britsih Empire, written by Alicia Turner, is an important story that was brought back from the forgotten regions of history. I am very grateful that this person and his life story was brought back to the collective consciousness to inspire Buddhists to continue this anti-colonial work by honouring the ancient teachings of the Buddha and the schools that have served the dhamma for thousands of years." -- Acharya Samaneti

"...an astounding feat of historical detective work..." -- Joie Szu-Chiao Chen , Lion's Roar

"Part detective work, part academic study, this book is, first and foremost, a cracking good story well told. It pieces together the tale of a famous Irishman from the very start of the 20th century." -- Ian Kilroy, Independent.ie

"The Irish Buddhist captures a time of significant change and enterprise, one which easily resonates with the world of today. The subtitle of the book is "The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire" and this biography is a fascinating, informative insight into a wonderful character who, without a decade worth of joint research, may well have been lost to the great ocean of the past." -- Daniel Seery, Dublin Inquirer

"This groundbreaking study rewrites our understanding of the first Westerners to embrace Buddhism as a living faith. The authors offer a vivid portrait of a working-class Irishman in colonial Burma for whom Buddhism was not just a personal spiritual quest but a radical social and political practice." -- Stephen Batchelor, author of Secular Buddhism and After Buddhism

"This is an extraordinary book. The authors have painstakingly tracked down scraps of evidence of U Dhammaloka's life from across continents, often in the most unlikely of places, and have succeeded in piecing together a wealth of information to reveal an unlikely and likeable hero. The result is not simply a gripping story. It is an education into the lives, ingenuity, and resilience of the usually undocumented, ordinary people living precarious lives on the margins of society across the globe at the height of Empire. It retraces the extensive networks of cooperation they formed in common cause for survival and a dignified life against a backdrop of extraction, exploitation and misrepresentation. This is a history of those who usually have no voice in its writing, a history that dismantles the civilizing myths of colonialism." -- Kate Crosby, Professor of Buddhist Studies, King's College, London

"With notable tenacity and thoroughness, the authors trace the wandering career of the first European convert Buddhist monk, U Dhammaloka. Recounting the life of the fascinating twentieth-century working-class Irishman turned Burmese Buddhist monk, the authors bring into sharp relief the ways in which currents of intellectual, religious, and economic change made Buddhism a global tradition in an age of migration, colonization, and empire in Asia" -- Richard M. Jaffe, Director of the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and Professor of Buddhist Studies, Duke University

"Among the early European converts to Buddhism, we think of Madame Blavatsky, Alexandra David-Neel, and Ananda Metteyya. But there were many more, perhaps none more intriguing than the Irishman U Dhammaloka. Drawing on some impressive detective work, the authors here paint a fascinating picture-more than a sketch, less than a portrait-of this shape-shifting Buddhist monk. In the process, they provide many insights into fin-de-siècle Buddhism." -- Donald Lopez, Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, University of Michigan