Tendzin, who was HIV-positive, knowingly had sex with students for three years without disclosing his infection. Citing an AIDS-related infection, allegations arose that Tendzin had passed HIV to a male partner in the Colorado congregation, who in turn unknowingly infected his female partner. After Trungpa's death, Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin became spiritual head of Vajradhatu until around 1989. A series of leadership changes that followed impacted the Rocky Mountain Dharma Center. In 1987, Trungpa died of illnesses related to his long-term alcohol abuse. Improvements were made over the next decades and more structures built, to create the capacity for year-round programs. A band of hippies who called themselves the Pygmies built the first rough structures and inhabited the land as a commune, and the first dathun (intensive meditation instruction) was held there in the summer of 1974. The land for what was then called Rocky Mountain Dharma center was purchased for Trungpa with money from a donor.

Trungpa's growing umbrella organization was called Vajradhatu. Students from neighboring towns and across the country became part of the Karma Dzong Meditation Center in Boulder. Trungpa arrived in Boulder, Colorado, in 1970 with a number of students from Tail of the Tiger in Barnet, Vermont, now known as Karmê Chöling. The center is one of several retreat centers affiliated with Shambhala, a global Buddhist community of predominantly Western students that has been in crisis in recent years due to multiple credible allegations of sexual misconduct against its leader, and public revelations of an institutional history of ongoing abuse.

The original center on this land was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1971 at Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. Retreat center in Boulder, Colorado Shambhala Mountain Center The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya Which Liberates Upon Seeing Chogyam Trungpa Rinpocheĭrala Mountain Center (formerly known as Shambhala Mountain Center) is a spiritual retreat center located on 600 acres in a valley in the northern Colorado Rocky Mountains.

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