Founding on Telegraph Avenue

Samuel Bercholz and Michael Fagan founded Shambhala Publications in 1969 out of the back of a bookstore Bercholz ran on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, at the height of the Bay Area's countercultural interest in Asian religion and contemplative practice, choosing the name Shambhala after the mystical kingdom described in Tibetan Buddhist tradition as a hidden source of wisdom beyond the Himalayas.

The press's first publication, Meditation in Action by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, appeared that same year and set the tone for the young company's list, which concentrated heavily on Buddhist teaching, meditation instruction and related contemplative literature rather than the broader occult and New Age subject matter other esoteric publishers of the era pursued. Trungpa himself became closely associated with the press over the following years as he built his own teaching organization in the United States, giving the company an unusually direct connection to a living teaching lineage rather than the historical reprint work that characterized several of its contemporaries. The company relocated from Berkeley to Boulder, Colorado in 1976 to be near Naropa Institute, the Buddhist inspired university Trungpa had founded there the previous year, deepening the press's institutional ties to his teaching community.