Shambhala International (post-Sakyong scandal)

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, an 11th-generation incarnate Tibetan lama, fled Tibet in 1959, studied at Oxford in the 1960s, and in 1970 relocated to North America. He founded Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in 1974 and the Shambhala lineage in 1976, layering a secular 'Shambhala Training' meditation programme on top of Vajrayana practice. Trungpa's tenure was marked by his own widely documented alcoholism and sexual relationships with students, and by the 1985 Halifax revelations that his appointed Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin had knowingly transmitted HIV to multiple students. After Trungpa's 1987 death his son Mipham J. Mukpo (Sakyong Mipham) eventually assumed the lineage. The 2018 Project Sunshine reports by Andrea M. Winn (drawing on a confidential survivor-testimony archive) and the follow-up Wickwire Holm independent investigation commissioned by the Shambhala Board documented multiple instances of Sakyong Mipham's sexual misconduct. Sakyong Mipham stepped back from administrative leadership; the entire Kalapa Council resigned. The organisation continues with reformed governance under a Potrang Council and an interim board. The case is one of the most-cited modern examples of Western Vajrayana high-control patterns surviving across two generations.