In March 2502/1959, the Chinese made an attempt to arrest the Dalai Lama who then fled through the Himalaya to India. As Tibet was made part of China, refugees streamed to the northern borders of India and Nepal where they established large colonies. Some of the Tibetans went further to Europe and America where they founded monasteries and refugee communities. Tibetan meditation centres were also established for the native Western people and since 2508/1965 Tibetan Buddhism has begun to be well known to the Americans. Under compe-tent masters (called Rimpoche), Tibetan meditation centres have multiplied rapidly and they are gaining new disciples every day.

Among the best-known and most influential of the Tibetan masters in America are Chogyam Trungpa Tulku and Tarthang Tulku. Chogyam Trungpa arrived in the United States in 2513/1970 when he founded the Tail of the Tiger community near Barnet, Vermont, in March. In November of the same year, he moved to Boulder, Colorado, where the Karma Dzong Meditation Center was organized in March 2514/1971 and the Naropa Institute originated in 2517/1974.
Tarthang Tulku arrived in the United States in 2501/1968. It is he who founded the first Tibetan meditation centre for Americans, the Tibetan Nyingmapa Meditation Center in Berkeley, California, which was organized in the spring of 2502/1969.

The degree of the success of Tibetan Buddhism in America is clearly indicated in the following words of Needleman: "Tibetan Bud-dhism will be for the West in the coming decade what Zen Buddhism has been in the last decade and...will enrich our understanding of religion no less than Zen Buddhism has."

In Britain, a number of Tibetan Buddhist centres have also been established. Among these are the Tibetan Centre at Samya Ling, the Kham Tibetan House, the Manjushri Institute and the College of Tibetan Buddhist Studies.

In 2519/1976, a group of Americans on the East Coast founded an organization to provide a place for the intensive practice of insight (Vipassana) meditation, called the Insight Meditation Society. The IMS now operates a retreat centre which is set on 80 wooded acres in the quiet farm country of Barre in central Massachusetts. Besides the unsalaried staff, the Society invites meditation teachers from other parts of America, Europe and Asia to conduct retreats at the IMS. Of the four resident teachers of the centre, the first two, Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, spent long years as Buddhist monks studying and practising meditation under Southeast Asian meditation masters, especially Buddhadasa Bhikkhu of Suan Mokh, Chaiya, and Ajahn Chah of Wat Pah Pong, Ubon, both in Thailand. With this Southern Buddhist background of its ex-monk teachers, this big meditation centre can be said to represent the Theravada meditation tradition in America.

Also in 2519/1976, Ajahn Sumedho, an American monk, was granted permission by his teacher, Ajahn Chah of Wat Pah Pong, a forest monastery in Ubon Province in Northeast Thailand, to visit his aging parents in California. On his way back to Thailand, Ajahn Sumedho made a stop in London where he came into contact with Mr. George Sharp, Chairman of the English Sangha Trust, which was established in 2499/1956 to provide a suitable residence for bhikkhus in England. The Trust owned the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara which was, in 2519/1976, empty. In 2520/1977, Ajahn Sumedho accompanied Ajahn Chah to London and was left with three other Western monks, all disciples of Ajahn Chah, to stay at the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara. As the site of the Vihara was considered unsuited for forest monks and as a forest called Hammer Wood in West Sussex was given to the Sangha, the monks headed by Ajahn Sumedho moved from London to Sussex on June 22, 2522/1979. There, they developed the Chithurst Forest Monastery or Wat Pah Cittaviveka, where the Thai forest Theravada tradition began to be settled in the West and the Western Sangha began to grow on the Western soil.