Lead Investigator: Carol Merchasin

This is an excerpt from the final report of an investigation into the permissive sexual culture in Vajradhatu/Shambhala. It was submitted to the Vermont Superior Court on December 4, 2025 (82-5-20 Cacv) in re the case of Bihari vs. Shambhala USA et al. The full report (names of perpetrators and victims have been redacted) can be found here.

Analysis

Our investigation focused on the role of Vajradhatu’s culture in enabling and perpetuating the sexual assault and/or exploitation of children and minors. We defined culture as a “set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts….”¹⁴⁸ In other words, “the way we do things here.”¹⁴⁹

We accepted the commonly held tenet that the culture of an organization is strongly influenced by the words and actions of its leaders.¹⁵⁰

In other words, it starts at the top.

We included the twenty victims’ narratives in loose chronological order in the prior section Background on Vajradhatu 1975-1995. There, we see a consistent pattern of sexual abuse and/or predation of children and minors aged nine to eighteen by adults, primarily in their thirties to forties.

Between 1976 and 1983, which is where we saw most sexual incidents, we identified the following victims whose accounts were corroborated and/or credible:

[REDACTED] was abused from age nine to fourteen by an older man, from 1975 to 1980) in the presence and with the assent of her mother. It was accepted and common knowledge in the community. [REDACTED] was the co-director of the Austin, Texas Dharmadhatu and went on to become a director in Vajradhatu in Boulder.
[REDACTED] attempted to grope [REDACTED] in 1979 by pushing her in a closet at the Kalapa Court Boulder, the headquarters of Vajradhatu. [REDACTED] was thirteen. [REDACTED] lived on the premises with his wife. He was “notorious” for going after young girls.
[REDACTED] was sexually assaulted by [REDACTED] while he was on a ski trip when he was thirteen or fourteen. [REDACTED] also assaulted [REDACTED].
[REDACTED] was sexually assaulted by [REDACTED] an aide-de-camp to the Regent, Trungpa’s hand-picked successor in 1980. She was thirteen. He was, according to [REDACTED] also well known for this.
The same year, [REDACTED] went on a group trip to Japan with her parents and Trungpa and was kissed and fondled by [REDACTED] and another man, in a public space while adults looked on.
In 1979, [REDACTED],then sixteen, was pulled into a closet by her father’s male friend during a party at her father’s house. The man attempted to molest her.
[REDACTED] was repeatedly assaulted when he was around twelve at RMDC in 1980, while his mother was involved in intense meditation practices for three months. At the age of fourteen, in 1982, he returned and was again assaulted by two different men. In June 1982, he attempted suicide there. His mother consulted Trungpa about what to do. He advised her to do another three-month retreat and leave [REDACTED] in a psychiatric facility, which she did. He committed suicide in 2019.
At a party for children, in 1981, [REDACTED] observed Trungpa “tongue kissing” [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] was approximately thirteen or fourteen-years-old. There were adults present who looked uncomfortable, but no one did anything.
In 1981, [REDACTED] had sex with three different older men. She was fifteen. The men were in their thirties.
In 1981, [REDACTED] was assaulted at Karmê Chöling. His mother reported to [REDACTED] that two “senior teachers” were the assaulters. Her son later told her that [REDACTED] was one of the perpetrators. [REDACTED] paid her and her son money.
In 1982, [REDACTED], a member of Trungpa’s inner circle, engaged [REDACTED] in a relationship that involved sexual touching. This began at an Encampment. She was sixteen. He was thirty-three and married. They began having penetrative sex once she turned seventeen, with Trungpa’s permission. Based the composition of the 1988 Vajradhatu Board, we have inferred [REDACTED] was on the Vajradhatu Board at the time.
At the same time, [REDACTED] (seventeen) was also having a sexual relationship with [REDACTED] (early thirties). In fact, “everyone but their wives knew.” Based on the composition of the Vajradhatu Board in 1988, we have inferred that [REDACTED] was on the Vajradhatu Board at the time.
In 1982-1983, [REDACTED] was constantly seeing adults, including her mother, having sex with a variety of partners at Karmê Chöling. She was so sexualized that she “came on” to [REDACTED] a much older man whom she kissed on the mouth. She was between twelve and thirteen.
For two years beginning in 1982, Aaron Bihari was groomed by [REDACTED] who invited him to his living quarters and gave him alcohol. Aaron was fourteen and [REDACTED] was in his mid to late forties.
In 1982 or 1983, at Karmê Chöling, [REDACTED]’s meditation instructor kissed her on the lips while he was supposed to be giving her meditation instruction.
In 1983, [REDACTED], Trungpa’s doctor, a member of the Board and in Trungpa’s “inner circle”, was having a sexual relationship with [REDACTED] who was sixteen. “Multiple people were aware.”
In 1983, Alan Marlowe began sexually abusing Aaron Bihari and this continued until 1985. Marlowe died of AIDS in about 1990.¹⁵¹ [REDACTED] became aware of rumors that Marlowe was a pedophile and avoided being alone with him. Marlowe told him, “Old enough to pee, old enough for me.”
In 1983, Aaron Bihari was “making out” with a twenty-nine-year-old woman in public, at Karmê Chöling. Later that night, John Weber raped him.
[REDACTED] began having penetrative sex with [REDACTED] in 1983 when she turned seventeen, saying that he had asked Trungpa for permission to do so and had received it.
When Aaron Bihari was fifteen, in 1983, at Encampment at RMDC, Alan Marlowe involved him in kissing and heavy petting.

This pattern did not end in 1983, however.

In 1985, Trungpa took seven young women as his “consorts,” sangyum or spiritual wives. His “wedding” to [REDACTED] took place on her eighteenth birthday. Her parents were delighted.
In 1985, when Aaron Bihari was seventeen, he was in a three-way kiss with [REDACTED] and a woman named [REDACTED] in front of the entire dining hall. Although people saw it, noone said or did anything.
[REDACTED] had sexual intercourse with [REDACTED] in 1986. He was sixteen years old and she was twenty. She was the family’s nanny.
The Regent announced he had AIDS in 1988 and had had unprotected sex with unknowingpartners. [REDACTED] was a victim whose sister remembers [REDACTED] telling her that he gave the Regent a “blowjob” when he was seventeen (and the Regent was thirty-seven).
[REDACTED] also had sex with [REDACTED] in 1989 when he was fifteen and she was twenty-eight.
The Regent died in 1990 of AIDS.¹⁵²
In 1991, Jane Doe gave a report to the Boulder Police Department about her assault by [REDACTED] at Karmê Chöling when she was eleven and he was around 27. He later went to jail for another sexual assault of another minor. By way of explanation, he said to the police, “That’s just the way things were there” and “It felt normal.”
[REDACTED] died of AIDS in 1993.
[REDACTED] gave a report to the police about her assault at Karmê Chöling by [REDACTED] in 1994. Adults were present while a grown man hit on a thirteen-year-old child. He was forty-five. Alcohol was served. It was so normalized that the perpetrator bragged at breakfast the next morning to a roomful of adults that he had had sex with a thirteen year-old. When the director of Karmê Chöling asked [REDACTED] about it later, [REDACTED] lied, and the matter was dropped.

To reach a conclusion, we identified and analyzed the following patterns that arose from our investigation:

Whether Vajradhatu was a high demand group with an authoritarian, charismatic leader who held total power, required total loyalty and where no accountability, dissent or criticism was permitted;
Whether the disdain for moral or ethical standards led to the normalization of deviant behavior such as the excessive use and normalization of alcohol and permissive sexual relationships; and
Whether the organization knew of or willfully disregarded the abuses that were occurring.

The Culture of High Demand Groups

As we mentioned earlier, while we do not use the label “cult,” we see many elements in Vajradhatu that experts find indicative of high demand organizations, including the following that we identified in our investigation:

Authoritarian, charismatic leader
Ideology requires total commitment
Neither critical thinking nor dissent is permitted
There is no accountability.¹⁵³

We began this Report by recounting a well-reported episode that happened in 1975 – an episode of assault and sexual violence against two people who refused Trungpa’s command to return to a party they had already attended earlier in the evening.¹⁵⁴ Trungpa ordered his students to forcibly bring [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], two poets, to the party and then to strip both the man and the woman naked.¹⁵⁵ No one questioned his orders.¹⁵⁶ When the woman appealed to friends in the room to call the police or help her in some way, only one man responded, and Trungpa hit him for trying to assist her.¹⁵⁷

Some students at that 1975 seminary might have struggled to understand that incident, but the comments in the articles that were written later showed largely that people rationalized Trungpa’s behavior as the work of a “crazy wisdom” teacher, or a “vajra master” who knew a secret method that would lead them to enlightenment.¹⁵⁸

At the end of that seminary, people who were present took a samaya vow. It said, “May I shrivel up instantly and rot if I ever discuss these teachings with anyone who has not been initiated into them by a qualified master.”¹⁵⁹

Here is one of the leading Buddhist teachers, Dzongsar Khyentse speaking to Vajradhatu students in 2017:

If an impure perception – such as criticism of one’s guru – is made deliberately and consciously, and if it then goes on to become a well-organized, choreographed public discussion with no room for amendment or correction, it constitutes a total breakage of samaya.¹⁶⁰

As another teacher put it, “Breaking…samaya is more harmful than breaking other vows. It is like falling from an airplane compared to falling from a horse.”¹⁶¹

In other words, if one had taken the samaya vow (as most of Trungpa’s students had and anyone in any position of power within Vajradhatu had), Trungpa could not be criticized. In fact, you could not even think an impure thought about the guru. If you did have a negative thought and you wanted to leave the community, there were consequences.

Stephen Butterfield said:

Trungpa told us that if we ever tried to leave the Vajrayana, we would suffer unbearable, subtle, continuous anguish, and disasters would pursue us like furies. […] If this was the consequence of merely leaving the organization, what supernatural wrath might be visited upon me for publicly questioning or discussing my experience in it?¹⁶²

Disdain for ethical boundaries led to the normalization of deviant behavior

As in any organization, the members model what the leader does and interpret what the leader says.¹⁶³ Trungpa’s behavior was based on his teaching of “crazy wisdom,” which allowed him and the community that emulated him to redefine ethical boundaries to justify and normalize harmful behaviors.¹⁶⁴ ¹⁶⁵

One of his teachings that was also prone to being manipulated to justify wrongdoing was that there was “no right” and “no wrong.” In Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Pema Chödrön, a prominent student of Trungpa Rinpoche, states: “My undying devotion to Trungpa Rinpoche comes from his teaching me in every way he could that you can never make things right or wrong.”¹⁶⁶ Further: “As far as I’m concerned, if you’re going to make things right and wrong you can never even talk about fulfilling your bodhisattva vows.”¹⁶⁷

Trungpa’s teachings on “no right, no wrong” do not necessarily negate ethics or morality; it is possible to understand “no right, no wrong” as encouragement to suspend quick judgments and remain open to nonjudgemental opinions; however, without clear ethical guidelines and accountability to prevent misuse or misinterpretation, especially in contexts where power dynamics are at play, it is, at the very least, easy to use “no right, no wrong” as a justification for bad behavior. Lama Elizabeth Monson, Buddhist teacher and author of Tales of a Mad Yogi: The Life and Wild Wisdom of Drukpa Kunley explained in an interview that crazy wisdom arose in 15th century Tibet in a vastly different social and historical context where a teacher would only have one or two students. She said, “Translating this complex teaching to the US in the seventies appears to have created a lot of misunderstandings.”

After interviewing dozens of people, we detail examples below of what “crazy wisdom” as practiced by Trungpa modeled and how “no right, no wrong” got misused in the Vajradhatu community:

Dog¹⁶⁸ and cat torture.
“Tongue kissing” a twelve-year-old at a children’s party as adults looked on.
Marrying a sixteen-year-old¹⁶⁹ and taking seven spiritual “wives,” one of whom had just turned eighteen.
Modeling sexual promiscuity by having open sexual relationships with many women, of which at least two were teenagers;¹⁷⁰
Recklessly advising the Regent that he should remain quiet about his AIDS diagnosis and that he didn’t need to inform or protect his sexual partners;¹⁷¹
Giving permission for at least one man on his Board of Directors to sexually exploit a minor;
Ignoring credible reports of abuse of minors;
Encouraging and condoning predatory sexual relationships between minors and older men and women;
Knowing and permitting the Regent to coerce men into sex;
Allowing known sexual predators like [REDACTED], the Regents “aide-de-camp,” and [REDACTED] to hold prominent positions within the organization and doing nothing to end their abuse;
Encouraging parents to send their children to retreat centers where there was no safeguarding of children.
Creating and permitting an environment at the retreat center (where children and minors were sent unattended) where having sex with eleven and thirteen-year-olds was “the way things worked” and “natural.”

Others modeled dangerous behavior based on such teachings:

At least two Board members knew for two years that the Regent had AIDS and did nothing;¹⁷²
Parents allowing their young children to be sexually abused or their teenagers to have sexual relationships with much older men.

Once again, we look to the public words of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. In this article, he is explaining to the Vajradhatu/Shambhala that gurus like Trungpa are above the law. “We cannot modify Vajrayana’s fundamental view just because it doesn’t suit the minds of a few liberal, puritanical, Abrahamic or individualistic activists…. Do aspects of this journey [the Vajrayana path] go against commonly accepted laws… From a worldly point of view, much of the Vajrayana seems unthinkable, perhaps even criminal.” ¹⁷³

We understand Dzongsar Khyentse to be referring to the worldview of the US which is based on a JudeoChristian moral framework and that he is dismissing what he considers “liberal, puritanical, Abrahamic or individualistic activists” as rigid or perhaps outdated.¹⁷⁴ Unfortunately, this proud disdain for the law, “the worldly point of view” and US ethical boundaries normalized a great deal of deviant behavior for adults who revered Trungpa and emulated his behavior.

Normalization of Harmful Behaviors: Alcohol and Sex

The excessive use of alcohol

Trungpa was routinely described as an alcoholic, at the very least a heavy drinker who often drank alcohol before and during public lectures.¹⁷⁵ He described his view in a chapter of his book The Heart of the Buddha entitled “Alcohol as Medicine or Poison” where he describes the role of alcohol in certain Vajrayana practices.¹⁷⁶ Although some critics would say that it was less a spiritual strategy and more of an addiction, whatever it was, it led to his death from alcohol poisoning at forty-seven years old in 1987.¹⁷⁷

But the more critical issue is the culture of drinking that developed within the Vajradhatu community as it followed his lead. This permission for alcohol consumption and drunkenness seeped into the community. Students saw Trungpa drunk on many occasions; he drank from morning until night and frequently gave public talks while drunk.¹⁷⁸ As [REDACTED] said, the culture of Shambhala involved more drinking “than she had ever seen even among the undergraduates at the University of Colorado.”

What alcohol did for the culture of Vajradhatu was like what “crazy wisdom” did, which was to lower inhibitions and erase boundaries. Where, as here, it is promoted as a desirable spiritual tool, a way of letting go of “ego,” and defying conventional societal norms, members sought to make themselves into the image of their guru and adopt the traits that he told them could lead to enlightenment.

Alcohol was not reserved for those who were over twenty-one. We often heard that alcohol was served to young teens at Encampment or Sun Camp and at Karmê Chöling and RMDC. In addition, many of the child/minor victims of sexual abuse and/or predation were served alcohol by adults or in the presence of adults at shockingly young ages.

Here are the child/minor victims who were served alcohol at a Vajradhatu event or retreat center:

[REDACTED] informed us that a Shambala member who was over twenty years older than [REDACTED] began what she described as an “affair” with him at sixteen. She reported understanding that [REDACTED] sent [REDACTED] a package of heroin from her home in Germany along with instructions on how to use it. They eventually married several years later. Consequently, [REDACTED] struggled with drug addiction throughout his life, mainly cocaine and heroin. In 1987, while visiting his mother over Christmas in Nova Scotia, [REDACTED] recalls being strung out and feeling bad about himself. At that point he describes himself as “a nineteen-year-old coke whore.”
Aaron Bihari - Alan Marlowe began grooming Aaron at fourteen with invitations to visit his A-frame in the evenings for sake. Underage drinking was a common occurrence in the community and encouraged by adults. Aaron served and drank alcohol at parties starting at twelve.
[REDACTED] struggled with alcohol over the years and was exposed to cocaine in the community as a minor. [REDACTED]’s mother, [REDACTED], said she wasn’t aware of her son’s exposure to cocaine, and that she struggled to understand how the group has affected her family.
[REDACTED] - At age fifteen, [REDACTED] acted out while at Karmê Chöling. He drank, stole the director’s car and got into an accident.
[REDACTED] - [REDACTED] has had a lengthy battle with alcohol and drug addiction. He recalls being barely conscious when he was molested by [REDACTED] at sixteen years of age.
[REDACTED] – [REDACTED] attended Sun Camp retreats, one at Karmê Chöling and one in Canada. It was there that she recounts things being out of control. At Sun Camp, they were encouraged to drink, smoke, and do drugs. This behavior was normalized. The staff were often drunk, the older teenagers were drunk, there was no supervision and there were inappropriate sexual situations. [REDACTED] was also plied with alcohol by [TODO: REDACT?] C.W. Linsley during her sexual assault in the presence of adults.
[REDACTED] jumped out of a second-story window at the Kalapa Court in Halifax after taking LSD and suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Unrestrained Sexual Activity

Trungpa was transparent in his alcohol use and sexual behaviors. He was well known for what [REDACTED] termed “sex with most of the women in Boulder.” Trungpa modeled and normalized a permissive sexual culture with many sexual boundary violations.

One of the minor victims we interviewed, mentioned that she was normalized to sexual activity as a young child, because she saw the adults around her having sex with a variety of partners. She saw the guru whom her mother revered and obeyed passionately kissing a twelve-year-old at a party for children, asking her if she ”knew how to hug a man?” and she understood that is what she was “supposed to do.”

Our investigation also found that Trungpa gave permission for [REDACTED] (who was in his “inner circle,” perhaps even on his Board) to have penetrative sex with [REDACTED] when she had just turned seventeen. This is not only grossly unethical but also predatory.

We have used the term “minors” throughout to distinguish those teenagers who were above the age of legal consent (fifteen in Colorado and sixteen in Vermont) but still under the age of eighteen. We feel this is important because while these relationships were not always illegal, ¹⁷⁹ they were predatory and exploitative.

These age-disparate relationships created an inherent disparity of power which worked against the minor, allowing him or her to be manipulated and controlled. The older person is an authority figure by virtue of age and position, allowing the minor to be exploited sexually. This was especially true with [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] who were exceedingly close to Trungpa, which carried its own power to a young person in a culture where access to Trungpa was a highly coveted opportunity conveying social status.

We note as we have before that culture is modeled by the person at the top, especially when that person is fashioned as an enlightened being, to whom you have also taken an oath of loyalty. In this case, what Trungpa modeled was his official marriage to Diana Pybus, a sixteen-year-old, and many sexual relationships with young women. [REDACTED] told us they had sex with Trungpa at nineteen and twenty-one years old. It has long been rumored that Trungpa had sex with [REDACTED] when she was thirteen years old, but we were not able to confirm that. He did however, “marry” on her eighteenth birthday.

What the “taken-for-granted, implicit assumptions” say about culture.

“Everyone knew.”

That is one of the most common responses from interviewees, both victims and witnesses. By his own account, everyone knew that [REDACTED] was sleeping with the nine-year-old daughter of his girlfriend. But no one called the police or removed him from his position as the director of the Austin Dharmadhatu. In fact, after three years of “everyone knowing,” he was promoted to a position as the Director of Vajradhatu Affairs in Boulder, where everyone also knew.

Everyone knew that sixteen-year-old [REDACTED] was having a sexual relationship with [REDACTED] who was thirty-three. Or that at sixteen, [REDACTED] was having sex with [REDACTED] aged thirty-three, while he was having a child with Trungpa’s wife Diana and according to his stepson [REDACTED] many other sexual relationships.

Everyone knew that Trungpa had married a sixteen-year-old and was having sex with many women, including some teenagers.

Some people knew that Karmê Chöling was not a safe place for children. In 1981, [REDACTED] told [REDACTED] who was in a position of power within the community that her son and others were sexually assaulted there. But nothing was done as evidenced by the fact that many others were assaulted after 1981, when Karmê Chöling was certainly aware of the problem: [REDACTED].

Adults saw [REDACTED] kissed on the lips in 1980 by two older men when she was thirteen or fourteen on a trip to Japan. Adults saw Trungpa inappropriately kiss [REDACTED] on the lips at thirteen or fourteen in approximately 1981 or 1982 and adults saw [REDACTED] approach and groom [REDACTED] at Encampment in 1982. Some adults saw Aaron Bihari as a fifteen-year-old being preyed upon by older women and men at Karmê Chöling in 1983.

Trungpa and two members of the Board likely knew several years before the Regent disclosed his AIDS diagnosis along with the stunning admission that he had been having unprotected sex with unsuspecting partners since 1985. We note that by 1982 gay activist groups were advocating for safe sex practices¹⁸⁰ and by 1985 there was HIV testing and public awareness of the disease and how it was spread.¹⁸¹ Instead, the Vajradhatu Board and Trungpa showed a reckless reliance on “magical thinking” and a callous disregard for the dangers, all of which created a significant risk for the health and lives of others.

Adults knew that minors were being given alcohol at both RMDC and Karmê Chöling, but alcohol continued to flow.

Even the children knew about the level of abuse. In the early 2000s, Andrea Winn asked this question at a Shambhala event in Halifax. “Why was so much sexual abuse allowed to happen to us kids?” Andrea goes on to say that when she raised the sexual abuse of the children in the community with the local leadership, she was removed from her volunteer positions and told to stop talking about “inappropriate things.” She left the community.

The lack of responsibility that Vajradhatu displayed for children and minors was such a “taken-for-granted” implicit assumption of the culture that no one said or did anything about it. Adults understood implicitly that the behavior they saw was behavior that the organization accepted, and to speak out was to be shunned by the community, as Andrea was, for implicitly criticizing the guru’s behavior, which as Dzongsar Khyentse pointed out, “was breaking the samaya vow.”¹⁸²

Conclusion

In 2018, The Transition Task Force, the governing body of Vajradhatu/ Shambhala after the prior Council had resigned in the face of yet another sexual abuse scandal, asked Pema Chödrön to address “the embedded patterns of sexual abuse and abuse of power”¹⁸³ within the organization. Although this request and her response came long after the last incident of abuse in our report, it highlights an unbroken line of sexual abuse, sexual predation and abuse of power within Vajradhatu/Shambhala.

In her letter to the community, Chödrön reflected that the days of Chögyam Trungpa were characterized by a “lot of drinking and a lot of sex.”¹⁸⁴ Further, she noted that despite the upheaval caused by the Regent’s ethical, moral (and potentially criminal) lapses in 1989, things didn’t change going forward.

As she says, “sexual behavior was considered no problem. The culture of looseness was systemic…. The upshot was, as we are now finding, that this culture gave permission to various individuals to do some very harmful things to women of all ages.”¹⁸⁵

We find Chodron’s comment to be accurate.

Using the methodology we described above, we identified victims of sexual abuse of children and the predation of minors in Vajradhatu, and we spoke to the victims we could find as well as any witnesses who could corroborate victim accounts and/or give us background information. Through this process, we identified nineteen credible incidents of abuse and predation in the relevant time period. Then we identified and analyzed the consistent patterns that ran through the victim narratives.

We conclude, as Chodron stated, that the culture of Vajradhatu gave permission to various individuals (some of them within the highest levels of leadership) to do “some very harmful things to women (and men) of all ages,”¹⁸⁶ but especially for the focus of our investigation, to children and minors.

We conclude that Vajradhatu was a high demand group with an authoritarian, charismatic leader who held total power and required total loyalty; an organization where there was no accountability, and neither dissent nor criticism was permitted. We also conclude that Vajradhatu exhibited a disdain for moral or ethical standards which enabled the normalization of deviant behavior, such as the excessive use of alcohol and permissive sexual relationships between teenagers and much older adults.

We conclude that the organization, through at least one of its Board of Directors, one of its high-level management Directors, and the founder, Trungpa, was aware of this child abuse and predation of minors from 1979 onward and failed to take the slightest action to safeguard the victims. Instead, Trungpa gave “permission” for the predation of at least one sixteen-year-old to continue.

We also conclude that much of the sexual predation of children and minors took place in the plain view of adults who did not intervene, call the police or notify anyone in authority within the organization. When an adult did notify Eric Holm of the sexual assault of her son by “senior teachers” at Karmê Chöling, there is no indication that anything was ever done, because at least one of those senior teachers remained in the inner circle of the organization well into the 2020s.

Despite the two decades of well publicized sexual misconduct that we investigated under the leadership of Trungpa and the Regent, we note another two decades of continued allegations of sexual misconduct followed. This points to an organization where misconduct is not just an anomaly tied to one individual but rather a systemic issue of Vajradhatu’s structure and norms, and a culture that enables and overlooks abuse and protects the abusers.

We conclude that these abuses were caused by and perpetuated by Vajradhatu’s culture and the extreme lack of care that was demonstrated for children and minors.

Footnotes

¹⁴⁸ Edgar H. Schein, Culture: The Missing Concept in Organization Studies 236 (1996). (emphasis added).

¹⁴⁹ Terrence E. Deal & Allan A. Kennedy, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life 12 (1982).

¹⁵⁰ Organizational Culture and Leadership, supra.

¹⁵¹ Alan Marlowe, cuke.com, https://www.cuke.com/people/marlowe-alan.htm (last visited Mar. 14, 2025)

¹⁵² Osel Tendzin, 47, Head of Tibetan Buddhists, Dies, supra.

¹⁵³ See, e.g., Laycock, supra; Boyle Laisure, supra; Rosedale & Langone, supra. One of the other cult indicators not included here is “control over behavior.” We did see that in our interviews – parents who were told to send their children to Karmê Chöling or RMDC unattended and we have general knowledge that dedicated community members took advice on marriage, children and other personal decisions from Trungpa, but we did not feel we had enough data to include that here.

¹⁵⁴ See Sanders, supra; Clark, supra at 22-24. We use the words “sexual violence” because the conduct fits the definition of the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner’s definition of sexual violence, which includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting” and explicitly lists forced nudity as an example of such violence. See United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissions, Sexual and gender-based violence in the context of transitional justice, ohchr.org, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/OnePagers/Sexual_and_genderbased_violence.pdf (last visited Mar. 14, 2025).

¹⁵⁵ Clark, supra at 24.

¹⁵⁶ Sanders, supra at 33-35.

¹⁵⁷ Clark, supra at 22.

¹⁵⁸ See Sanders, supra at 37-39; Clark, supra at 60.

¹⁵⁹ Butterfield, supra at 11.

¹⁶⁰ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Guru and Student in the Vajrayana, The Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, (Aug. 28, 2017), https://www.chronicleproject.com/guru-student-vajrayana/ .

¹⁶¹ Luke Wagner, The Three Vows, Welcome to the Collaborative Documents of the Tibetan Renaissance Seminar!, https://collab.its.virginia.edu/wiki/renaissanceold/The%20Three%20Vows.html (quoting Tulku Thondup et al. Perfect Conduct: Ascertaining the Three Vows (1999) (pinpoint citation omitted)).

¹⁶² Butterfield, supra at 11.

¹⁶³ Schein, supra at 138-152.

¹⁶⁴ In our review of the history of both Trungpa and Vajradhatu, we understand that students came to Trungpa not because of his “crazy wisdom” teachings, but because they were hungry for the “dharma” that he brought from Tibet. In addition to being charismatic, he was a gifted communicator who was able to “interpret” Eastern concepts to a Western world. In other words, while we do not know the background of every perpetrator, we do not find that people came to Vajradhatu as sexual abusers of children – it is more likely than not, they were influenced by the culture around them to become perpetrators.

¹⁶⁵ Bell, supra.; Monson, supra.

¹⁶⁶ Tricycle, supra.

¹⁶⁷ Id.

¹⁶⁸ Perks, supra, at 60-66.

¹⁶⁹ Flintoff, supra.

¹⁷⁰ We did not read or hear any accounts of adults who said that their sexual relationship with Trungpa or the Regent was not consensual. However, we note that the power that a charismatic authoritarian leader has over his students blurs the lines of consent. The Regent pressured straight and gay men into sex, and his knowingly having sexual relationships without protection and without informing his sexual partners, was reckless and irresponsible and a death sentence for at least one young man.

¹⁷¹ Butterfield, supra, at 183.

¹⁷² It was not possible for them to do anything because Trungpa’s cocktail of charisma laced with iron-clad authority offered no possibility but to believe in the magical thinking that he provided: that the “practices” made it impossible for the Regent to spread AIDS. And because he was the guru, “if I say so, you cannot disagree.” See Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake 365 (1992); Butler, supra.

¹⁷³ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Guru and Student in the Vajrayana, The Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (August 28, 2017), https://www.chronicleproject.com/guru-student-vajrayana/ (emphasis added). It is not only Dzongsar Khyentse who holds this view. Lama Zopa, another highly regarded Buddhist lama, responding to the report that Dagri Rinpoche, one of his Buddhist teachers, had sexually assaulted a number of women, said: ”….[A]ccording to my mind, Dagri Rinpoche is a very positive, holy being – definitely not an ordinary person….Therefore, I want to tell the students who have received initiations from him, that you should definitely one hundred percent rejoice, no matter what the world says, no matter if some people criticize him.” Ven. Holly Ansett, Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice to Students of Dagri Rinpoche, FPMT, (May 14, 2019), https://fpmt.org/lama-zoparinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/lama-zopa-rinpoches-advice-to-students-of-dagririnpoche/ .

¹⁷⁴ Dzongsar Khyentse, supra.

¹⁷⁵ Butler, supra.

¹⁷⁶ Chögyam Trungpa, The Heart of the Buddha 185-191 (1991).

¹⁷⁷ Julia Sagebien, Mitchell Levy, The Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, at 0:37 (Nov. 1, 2008), https://www.chronicleproject.com/mitchell-levy/ .

¹⁷⁸ Butler, supra.

¹⁷⁹ But note that sex with a 15-year-old that would be above the age of consent in Colorado would be illegal in Vermont. Vt. Stat. Ann. Titl. 13, § 3252 (as it existed in 1983), Colo. Rev. Stat. 18-3-403 (as it existed in 1983).

¹⁸⁰ The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Play Fair pamphlet, Calisphere, https://calisphere.org/item/5cafc7e3-63d2-4e35-be05-1cab00b065c0/ (last visited Mar. 14, 2025).

¹⁸¹ A Timeline of HIV and AIDS - 1985, HIV.gov, https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aidstimeline#year-1985 (last visited Mar. 14, 2025).

¹⁸² Dzongsar Khyentse, supra.

¹⁸³ Chödrön is a Buddhist nun, best-selling author, a student of Chögyam Trungpa and a revered member of the Vajradhatu community since the 1970s. Pema Chödrön apologizes for dismissing allegation of sexual assault from young woman, Lion’s Roar, (Sept. 23, 2018), https://www.lionsroar.com/pema-chodron-apologizes-for-dismissingallegation-of-sexual-assault-from-young-woman/ .

¹⁸⁴ Lion’s Roar, supra.

¹⁸⁵ Id. (emphasis added)

¹⁸⁶ Id.

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