Dhargyey Buddhist Centre trustee Peter Small said he was happy they had made it to 40 years, and he hoped for many more.
Keeping the Buddhism tradition alive was more important than ever since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950s, he said.
Many teachers at the time of the Tibetan occupation had fled, and some had since made Dunedin their home.
"There were millions of people involved in Buddhism in Tibet, and now that tradition is broken down and scattered around the world these days . . . we’re trying to keep the candle burning on the Tibetan identity and culture, as well as the spiritual culture of Buddhism.
"For a lot of Tibetans in New Zealand, they are refugees from when China took over in the ’50s. The first passports they’ve had are New Zealand passports."
On Saturday, the centre hosted speeches and offered food, and also held a raffle to help with repairs to the centre’s basement which has started to leak.
The top prize up for grabs was a weekend retreat in Owaka, and there were seven other prizes drawn from the 1760 tickets sold.
The Ven Lhagon Tulku said the centre came into being in 1984 and invited the Lama, the Ven Geshe Dhargyey who was born in Kham, eastern Tibet in 1921, to come and teach.
When he was forced to leave Tibet in 1959, the Lama undertook a dangerous journey of nine months, dealing with, at various times, Chinese gunfire and snowstorms, until reaching the Mustang region of Nepal.
From there, he joined the Dalai Lama in India until he was asked to make the move to Dunedin.
"The centre is here to provide a platform and a service, or to meet the spiritual needs of people.
"The centre is not here to propagate Buddhism or to convert."
The Dalai Lama visited and stayed at the centre during his visit to New Zealand in 1992, and he also visited the city in 1996 and 2013, when he gave teachings at the town hall and at the University of Otago.
