Gampo Abbey takes its name from Gampopa, the first monastic in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, a lineage stretching back nearly a thousand years. The abbey was founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who had fled Tibet in 1959 and spent decades building Buddhist institutions across North America. By the early 1980s, he envisioned a monastic center that could anchor the contemplative life for Western practitioners. Cape Breton, with its rugged beauty and sparse population, suited his purpose. The abbey became a lineage institution of Shambhala and operates as a corporate division of the Vajradhatu Buddhist Church of Canada. Under the spiritual direction of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and guided by its abbot Thrangu Rinpoche, the abbey has grown into one of the most significant Buddhist monastic communities in the Western Hemisphere.

Gampo Abbey's principal teacher is Pema Chodron, the American-born Buddhist nun whose books on meditation, compassion, and working with difficult emotions have reached millions of readers worldwide. Chodron came to Gampo Abbey and became one of its defining presences, teaching, writing, and eventually completing the three-year retreat at Sopa Choling herself. Her association with the abbey has brought international attention to this remote corner of Nova Scotia. But the community extends well beyond any single figure. Residents include monks and nuns who have taken life ordination, those on temporary ordination of at least nine months, and lay practitioners. The life monastics are ordained in the Mulasarvastivadin lineage of the vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code. In May 2013, the Shambhala Monastic Order was formally established, providing an umbrella organization for Gampo Abbey and any future Shambhala monasteries.

The three-year retreat is one of the most demanding commitments in Buddhist practice, and Sopa Choling has been conducting them since Thrangu Rinpoche founded the retreat center in 1990. The program follows a curriculum originally designed by the great 19th-century Buddhist master Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye. At Gampo Abbey, the retreats are conducted in English and divided into three segments with breaks between them, a structure Thrangu Rinpoche designed to make the practice accessible for people with family and career obligations. Six groups of retreatants have completed the full program, a total of 56 individuals. The seventh cycle is currently underway. For those not ready for a multi-year commitment, the abbey offers the Yarne winter retreat, shorter in-house retreats, solitary retreats, and practice intensives.

In 1996, Thrangu Rinpoche requested that a stupa be built at the abbey. Construction began in 1999, and Thrangu Rinpoche consecrated the completed Stupa of Enlightenment in August 2001, dedicating it to world peace. The stupa houses relics of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who had died in 1987, and serves as both a devotional focus and a symbol that the dharma has taken root in Nova Scotia soil. The stupa's white form against the dark spruce and grey Atlantic sky has become one of the abbey's most recognizable images. Temporary ordination offers another entry point: after at least three months of residency, practitioners can request ordination for a minimum of nine months. Temporary monastics shave their heads, wear robes, and train in the disciplines of monastic life, experiencing the rhythms of the abbey without a lifetime commitment.

The abbey maintains ties to the local Cape Breton Shambhala community, but its true relationship is with the landscape. The cliffs above Pleasant Bay face northeast, directly into the prevailing winds. The nearest neighbors are lobster fishermen. In winter, storms pound the headland with a ferocity that makes indoor practice feel less like retreat and more like the only sensible option. This is deliberate. Buddhist monasticism has always sought places where comfort is not the default, where the environment strips away distraction and leaves the practitioner with nothing but their own mind. Gampo Abbey, at the edge of the Atlantic, at the edge of the continent, fulfills that function with an intensity that Chogyam Trungpa recognized four decades ago. The dharma, it turns out, takes root well in Nova Scotia's thin, wind-scraped soil.