Silacara

Sīlācāra Bhikkhu
Silacara, Rangoon, 1907
Religion	Theravada
Dharma names	Sīlācāra Bhikkhu
Personal
Nationality	British
Born	(1871-10-22)October 22, 1871 Hull, Yorkshire, UK
Died	January 27, 1951(1951-01-27) (aged 79) Chichester, West Sussex, UK
Senior posting
Based in	Burma
Title	Bhikkhu

Sīlācāra Bhikkhu, October 22, 1871, Hull, Yorkshire, UK — January 27, 1951, Chichester, West Sussex, UK), born and died as John Frederick S. McKechnie. He became a Buddhist monk in 1906 and was one of the earliest westerners in modern times to do so.

There are two main sources about Sīlācāra's life. The first is the biography in a Sri Lankan edition of A Young People's Life of the Buddha, by an anonymous author, whose information about McKechnie's early life needs verification; the second is the autobiography of Nyanatiloka Thera, who mentions him several times.

According to the biography, McKechnie's father was the baritone singer Sir Charles Santley and his mother was Caroline Mavis, however, Charles Santley's two wives were called Gertrude Kemble and Elizabeth Mary Rose-Innes, and being a child of Charles Santley would have given him the surname Santley not McKechnie. So, unless he was an extramarital child, this information is incorrect.

According to the same biography, he worked as apprentice stock-cutter in a clothing factory until the age of 21, then he emigrated to America to work for four years on a fruit and dairy farm. Whilst back in Glasgow, he had read about Buddhism in a copy of the magazine Buddhism: An Illustrated Review, which he had found in the public library, and answered the advertisement of the magazine's editor Bhikkhu Ānanda Metteyya (Charles Henry Allan Bennett) who asked for an editorial assistant in Rangoon. After going to Burma, he first taught for a year in the Buddhist boys' school of Mme Hlā Oung, a rich Burmese Buddhist philanthropist. It seems unlikely, however, that McKechnie, having been an apprentice in a clothes factory and a farm worker, was accepted as an editorial assistant for a magazine, taught at a school, and, after having become a Buddhist monk, translated and wrote books on Buddhism. So this information about his earlier employment might also be incorrect, and it seems more probably that he had received some kind of higher education during which he had learnt German. The Buddhist Boy school owned by Commissioner U Hla Aung and his wife Daw Mya May, and an English art teacher called Ward teaching there, is mentioned in other sources.

In 1906 Nyanatiloka accepted McKechnie as novice (samanera) with the name Sāsanavaṃsa. He then stayed with Nyanatiloka and Ānanda Metteya at Kyundaw Kyaung, Kemmendine, Rangoon—a monastic residence in a quiet area that Mrs Hlā Oung had built for Ānanda Metteya and Nyanatiloka.