Rigpa Fellowship

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Rigpa was founded in London in 1979 by Sogyal Lakar, known as Sogyal Rinpoche, as a center for the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in the Nyingma school of Vajrayana. Sogyal Lakar was also the author of the widely read Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which introduced many readers outside Tibetan Buddhism to its teachings on death and dying.

The organization grew over the following decades to operate centres in more than forty countries, with its United Kingdom operations registered under the charity name Rigpa Fellowship, charity number 279315, a reach few Western Buddhist organizations of its era achieved.

In 2017, following allegations of abuse from current and former students, Sogyal Lakar resigned as spiritual director, a role he had held for nearly four decades. He died in Thailand in August 2019, two years after resigning and without facing criminal charges. Rigpa continues to operate today as a registered UK charity with its reporting up to date, though under continuing regulatory attention, and its national associations in other countries operate as separate charitable bodies.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Rigpa's board of directors commissioned the London law firm Lewis Silkin LLP to investigate allegations against founder Sogyal Lakar following a July 2017 letter from eight current and former students detailing alleged physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Sogyal Lakar responded to the allegations in a letter to the Rigpa community dated 20 July 2017, stating he was clear in his own mind that he had never, ever, acted toward anyone with a motive of selfish gain or harmful intent; he did not deny the specific allegations against him.

Lewis Silkin's report, published in August 2018, found on the balance of probabilities that some students within Sogyal Lakar's inner circle had been subjected to serious physical, sexual and emotional abuse by him, and that senior Rigpa figures were aware of at least some of these issues and failed to address them. Rigpa fully disassociated from its founder afterward, adopting recommendations that included no further contact between Sogyal Lakar and Rigpa or its students, leadership changes, a written safeguarding policy and an external abuse helpline.

The Charity Commission for England and Wales' own statutory inquiry, opened November 2018 and published November 2020, reached the same substantive finding through a separate process, and formally sanctioned two former trustees, permanently disqualifying Susan Burrows and disqualifying Patrick Gaffney for eight years, for their own failure to act on knowledge of the allegations. Sogyal Lakar died in August 2019 without facing criminal charges; this atlas states these as an investigation's and a regulator's findings, not as an adjudicated fact.