Shambhala International

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

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche founded a meditation centre, Tail of the Tiger, now known as Karme Choling, in Vermont in 1970, then established Vajradhatu, the organization's original name, in Boulder, Colorado, in 1971. The network draws on the Kagyu and Nyingma Vajrayana lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

Leadership passed to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's son, enthroned in 1995 as the Sakyong, the organization's senior teacher and lineage holder, continuing the two lineages' shared teaching authority within the network. The organization was renamed Shambhala International in 2000 under his leadership and has been headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, since 1986.

Shambhala International today links more than 150 meditation centres and groups across North and South America, Europe and Oceania, a reach that makes it one of the larger Tibetan Buddhist organizational networks operating outside Asia. That growth, from one meditation centre in rural Vermont to a network spanning four continents, took just three decades. Its governing structure changed after 2018, when the Kalapa Council resigned amid allegations against senior leadership; an Interim Board has overseen the organization since.

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

In 2018, allegations of sexual misconduct by the Sakyong and other senior leaders became public, leading to the resignation of Shambhala's governing Kalapa Council. An Interim Board commissioned the Halifax law firm Wickwire Holm to investigate. Its findings, released in February 2019, found it more likely than not that the Sakyong had sought sexual contact with female students in a pattern documented from 1995 until at least 2005, describing a significant power imbalance given his position. Separate and more serious allegations, that the Sakyong and other senior leaders had assaulted other individuals, were investigated and not substantiated.

The Sakyong stepped back from teaching and administrative duties following the allegations, then stepped aside from the organization entirely in February 2022. Shambhala's Interim Board published the Wickwire Holm findings in full rather than withholding them, and established an ongoing community code of conduct process governing teacher-student relationships and complaint handling.

The Wickwire Holm report's own published findings name no individual beyond leadership roles, and this atlas follows the same convention here: the findings are stated as an independent investigation's own conclusions, commissioned by Shambhala itself, not as an adjudicated fact.