In 1970, upon his arrival in North America, Chögyam Trungpa established the teaching center "Tail of the Tiger" (now Karmê Chöling).
She and John met in Boulder, Colorado, in 1975, where they studied Tibetan Buddhism at Naropa University with Chögyam Trungpa, the notorious renegade Tibetan lama.
Fremantle, Francesca & Chögyam Trungpa (1975) The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo by Guru Rinpoche according to Karma Lingpa. Boulder: Shambhala ISBN 0-394-73064-X, ISBN 1-59030-059-9 (reissued 2003).
More recent additions to the collection of schools include Shambala originally conceived by Chögyam Trungpa, Diamond Way Buddhism, a multicultural Lay Buddhist tradition under the guidance of H.H. 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje and the New Kadampa tradition founded by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.
Moreover, it has its own cosmopolitan lineage and canonical "scriptures," mainly the works of popular and semischolarly authors—figures from the formative years of modern Buddhism, including Soen Shaku, Dwight Goddard, D. T. Suzuki, and Alexandra David-Neel, as well as more recent figures like Shunryu Suzuki, Sangharakshita, Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, Chögyam Trungpa, and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
His most well-known student in the Western world is Pema Chödrön, who took him as her primary teacher years after the death of her root guru, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
In 1980, Shibata accepted an invitation from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche to come to the United States and teach kyūdō, and founded the Ryūkō Kyūdōjō (龍虎弓道場 "dragon-tiger archery practice hall") in Boulder, Colorado; it is now called the Zenko Iba.
Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.
He was then asked by the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, to make his way to Scotland where Chogyam Trungpa and Akong Tulku Rinpoche had established the first Tibetan Buddhist centre in the west, Kagyu Samye Ling, in Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire.