page_title: Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The monk Samten who came to Samye Ling with Sherab Palden Beru around 1967. For some years the resident Tibetan community at Samye Ling comprised Akong Rinpoche, Sherab Palden and Samten.
context_page_description: Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre is a Tibetan Buddhist complex associated with the Karma Kagyu school located at Eskdalemuir, Scotland.
context_section_description: Before the present Temple complex was built, Samye Ling centred on just one building, a former hunting lodge called Johnstone House. In 1965 the Johnstone House Trust was formed with the objectives
  to make available to the public facilities for study and meditation based on Buddhist and other religious teaching leading to mental and spiritual well-being: and to provide guidance for those in need of such help: and in particular the utilisation of the property known as Johnstone House, Eskdalemuir, for such purposes.
  Initially the community there was led there by a Canadian Theravada monk named Anandabodhi. When the community declined, Anandabodhi returned to Canada; he was subsequently ordained in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition and enthroned as Namgyal Rinpoche by the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa.
  In 1967 the Johnstone House trustees invited the Tibetan lamas and refugees Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Akong Rinpoche to take over. They named the new community "Samye Ling", and were shortly joined by the thangka master-artist Sherab Palden Beru and the monk Samten. Samye refers to the first Buddhist monastic university in Tibet, while Ling means 'Place'.
  Trungpa Rinpoche quickly came into conflict with both Akong Rinpoche and the trustees. He drank heavily and slept with his students. He married one of these, a fifteen-year-old girl at the time the relationship began, attracting press attention. By this time he had already been banished to a nearby house and divested by the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa of his position as an official representative of the Karma Kagyu lineage. In 1970 he left for America to form other centres definitively ending his association with Samye Ling, except for a single, brief visit at the end of the 1970s to recover his seals of office, once the Karmapa had agreed to empower him as Vidyādhara, a Holder of the Karma Kagyü Lineage.
  For about the decade 1970 onwards these two and Akong Rinpoche together were the main resident Tibetans at the centre. They were joined during 1976 and 1977 by the Mani-pa Lama bLa mChog. During this seminal period of the 1970s, Samye Ling was the main and oldest Tibetan centre in Europe. As such, it received important visits from eminent teachers of many traditions, including first the Kalu Rinpoche (1973 and thereafter), the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa (1975 and 1977), Khamtrul Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyense Rinpoche and Urgyen Tulku.
  In 1969, musicians David Bowie and Leonard Cohen were students at Samye Ling.
  In fact Bowie not only studied Buddhism at Samye Ling, he almost became a monk there:
  "I was a terribly earnest Buddhist at the time [...] I had stayed in their monastery and was going through all their exams, and yet I had this feeling that it wasn't right for me. I suddenly realised how close it all was: another month and my head would have been shaved."
  The centre flourished and developed under the guidance of Akong Rinpoche and his brother  Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, who serves as both Abbot and Retreat Master. The centre includes one of the first Tibetan temples to be constructed in Western Europe, a large stupa, and accommodation for those taking a range of courses on Buddhism, meditation, spiritual development and art.
caption: The monk Samten about 1978.
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