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.

[2] 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 probable that he had received some kind of higher education during which he 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 1910 Sīlācāra intended to come to the Buddhist monastery Nyanatiloka planned to found near Novaggio, Lugano, Switzerland.

[10] When Sīlācāra's health broke down due to asthma complicated with heart trouble, he disrobed on the advice of the German Buddhist Dr. Paul Dahlke and returned to England late in 1925.

Due to health problems, he left London in 1932 for Wisborough Green, West Sussex to share the house ('The Kiln Bungalow') of Esther Lydia Shiel (née Furley) (1872-1942), the estranged wife of author M.P.