Leaving
After the uprising of 1959 the fourteenth Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of Tibetans crossed into India. Monasteries were re-founded in exile, in Dharamsala, in the south Indian settlements, and in Nepal and Bhutan, often from the few monks and few texts that had come out.
That reconstruction, under refugee conditions, is one of the reasons the tradition survived in a complete form, with its curriculum, debate training and tantric transmissions intact.
Teaching abroad
From the 1960s Tibetan teachers began working in Europe and North America. Chögyam Trungpa founded centres and a university programme in the United States, with lasting influence and a record of personal conduct his own students have had to reckon with. The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa's network, grew into one of the largest Buddhist organisations in the world.
The Dalai Lama himself became a global public figure, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, and known as much for dialogue with scientists as for religious teaching.
Preservation as a project
Exile turned preservation into deliberate work. Texts that existed in a single copy were reprinted, oral transmissions were recorded, and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center has digitised tens of thousands of volumes. Translation has become an organised field rather than the work of a few individuals.
The risk the tradition names itself is the opposite one: that it is preserved as a museum, studied and admired, while the long training that produced it becomes harder to sustain.
Why it matters
Tibetan Buddhism becomes one of the most visible Buddhist traditions worldwide.
History and tradition
What historians can say
Documented in exile government records, the centres' own histories and a large scholarly literature. Donald Lopez's work examines how Tibet was imagined in the West as a lost spiritual paradise, and argues that the image has cost Tibetans as well as helped them.