How did the Sakya family become located in Seattle, Washington?
In 1959, owing to the violent changes taking place in Tibet, Dagchen Rinpoche and his family (including his younger brother H.H. Trinly Rinpoche and his wife’s uncle Deshung Rinpoche) fled to Bhutan and then to India. Professor Turrell V. Wylie from the Tibetan Studies Program at the University of Washington, the first such program in the country, invited Dagchen Rinpoche to participate in a research project on Tibet sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. This enabled Dagchen Rinpoche to bring his family to Seattle, Washington, in 1960. The research project funding lasted for three years. Following that, over the next decade Dagchen Rinpoche had several positions at the University of Washington, including working in the Anthropology Department and at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
