Chögyam Trungpa’s Tantric Sex Cult: Secrecy, Surveillance, and Sexual Misconduct in Nova Scotia’s Esoteric Buddhism

In 2021, a new resident at Gampo Abbey Buddhist monastery discovered a spy camera in the men’s washroom. The monastery’s head monk recorded 382 videos, 69 of which included “footage of males in various states of dressing and undressing to shower or bathe” according to an agreed upon statement of facts archived in the case fles of Nova Scotia’s Provincial Court. This act of voyeurism resulted in two lawsuits: a criminal case in which the head monk received a sixty-day prison sentence, and an ongoing civil case against the Shambhala Canada Society and Gampo Abbey’s operators. In this paper, I provide context for the ongoing civil case, based on case fles and courtroom audio from the now concluded, criminal case. I demonstrate that the handling of the civil
lawsuit is set to become another example of the attempted silencing and punishing of survivors of sexual violence in Shambhala Buddhism.