The Finding and Founding of Samye Ling

In just a couple of years in the UK, Trungpa Rinpoché had acquired a growing circle of people interested both in his teachings and in him, as a teacher. In 1966, he and Akong Rinpoché, who had visited various dharma viharas and spiritual organisations in the UK, felt the time coming when they should look themselves to founding a Kagyu centre. They had no capital to invest but much faith in their karma.

One centre that they had visited, as dharma teachers, was the Johnstone House community, a Buddhist group established in the Southern Uplands of Scotland in 1965 by the Ven. Anandabodhi , later to be known as Namgyal Rinpoché. This centre was ailing by 1967, mainly due to the absence abroad of its founder and inspiration, and its members were seeking to sell the property. Thanks to the generosity of Anandabodhi and the astute thinking of Mr Robert Copley (a solicitor and friend of the two rinpochés), a solution was found whereby the trust deeds were transferred to the Tibetans at minimal expense. They named it Samye Ling in honour of Samye, the first great Buddhist monastic centre of Tibet.

If one excludes the Tibetan-styled but Kalmykian Kalachakra Temple of Saint Petersburg, Russia, founded in 1915, the temple founded by Kalmykian refugees in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1929 and the Lamaist Buddhist Center in Howell, New Jersey, US, founded in 1958, this was the first truly Tibetan centre in the West.

Akong Rinpoché should go down in history not as just a co-founder of Samye Ling but as the principal person who developed this very first Tibetan centre in the West, since Trungpa Rinpoché’s active time in Samye Ling was actually quite brief (see story) and soon to take another shape as his own ongoing career in the USA.

In its first years, the two Rinpochés brought reinforcements to help strengthen their team. Sherab Palden Beru, an artist gifted with many monastic skills (see dedicated page) and Samten, a monk, were brought on their joint decision. Akong Rinpoché’s younger brother Jamdrak came more unexpectedly, running away from his post as secretarial aide to the Gyalwang Karmapa in Rumtek, with the complicity of Trungpa Rinpoché.

......continue to the next part of the story: the First Tibetan Teachers in Europe