You probably haven’t heard of Laurence Carroll, the free-thinking, alcoholic Irish hobo born in Dublin in the 1800s, who travelled across the globe to Myanmar, gave up drinking, shaved his head and became the world’s first Western Buddhist monk.





If so, you won’t be the only one. The story of U Dhammaloka, as Carroll came to be known, was unearthed only a few years ago by a group of professors. Now, filmmaker Ian Lawton hopes to bring this fascinating story to life through a feature-length animated documentary.

The Dharma Bum will trace Dhammaloka’s footsteps across the world from Ireland to a remote forest monastery in Myanmar, where he denounced his Catholic upbringing and spent 13 years training to be a monk. In making the film, Lawton – director of film production company Reasonably Shorts – said he hopes to provide audiences worldwide with the “missing link” in the origin story of Western Buddhism.

“I want to bring Dhammaloka out of obscurity and into public awareness, where he deserves to be,” he said. “He is too important a figure to be known only by academics and religious studies experts. He is not only important to Irish history and the history of Myanmar, but also to the rest of the world. His story deserves to be told.”

Standing up to the British colonialists who were expanding across Southeast Asia at the time, researchers say Dhammaloka was under constant police surveillance until his conviction for sedition. After travelling the world under multiple aliases and faking his own death, Dhammaloka mysteriously disappeared.

“He is up there with Martin Luther King or Lenny Bruce and others who stood up for what they believed in, despite the odds,” said Lawton, who has won awards for several of his short films. “I feel we could all learn from Dhammaloka’s story. His transformation from alcoholic hobo to activist monk is remarkable and inspiring and should be celebrated.”

The story of The Dharma Bum was discovered by academics Brian Bocking, professor of the study of religions at University College Cork, and professor Alicia Turner, editor of the Journal of Burma Studies. Both have given their consent for Lawton to create the film based on their research.





“The film is as much about their detective work as it is about Dhammaloka,” Lawton said. “I find it fascinating that they would manage to piece together his story from the tiniest pieces of evidence. This man travelled in a time before passports, was constantly changing his name and even faked his own death.”

Lawton, a former animator, said his decision to tell Dhammaloka’s story through animation was based on the fact that no actual footage of the man exists.

“There is only one photograph of him where he is posed with his alms bowl after his ordination. There is no other visual record of him in existence. Traditional hand-drawn animation is unfortunately becoming a thing of the past, so it feels right to be bringing Dhammaloka back to life using a dying art,” he said.

Lawton and his team, which includes well-known animator Paul Bolger and Irish musician Mumblin’ Deaf Ro, are seeking funding for the film through the world’s first Buddhist crowd-funding system, dana.io. Crowd-funding, the practice of funding a project by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people via the internet, not only helps to raise funds but also “raises awareness about the project and builds an audience for a film yet to be made”, said Lawton, who has successfully funded past projects this way.

The Myanmar Times asked Lawton whether he thought the film’s title, taken from Jack Kerouac’s well-known 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, might prompt a response from the Kerouac estate.

“We do not expect any repercussions for using his 70-year-old title. Many films and organisations have used book tiles and song titles in various iterations over the years,” he said. “In the case of my film it is used in a respectful loving homage to his writing,” he added.

Lawton says he is looking forward to bringing Dhammaloka back to Myanmar, where his transformation from drunken hobo to activist monk began.

“Our Facebook page has received almost 3000 “likes” and 90 percent of those are from people in Myanmar,” he said. “I look forward to being able to bring the film there and screen it in cinemas.”

For more information about The Dharma Bum, or to make a contribution to the project, visit www.thedharmabum.eu.