The 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617–1682), referred to Rato Dratsang as Taktsang, or Tiger Nest, because of its fine scholars and debaters.

[1][2][3][4][5] Rato Monastery was founded on the outskirts of Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, in the 14th century by Tak Pa Zang Bo.

In 2008, a plan was created by the Delhi architectural firm Pradeep Sachdeva Design Associates (PSDA) and construction of a new monastic campus began.

When Rato Dratsang was first reestablished in Karnataka in India, it was administered as part of the re-established Drepung Loseling monastery, which is in the same area.

In 1986, Kyongla Rato Rinpoche and Geshe Thupten Lhundup (Nicholas Vreeland), along with some of their friends, created Rato Dratsang Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation, in order to "generate financial support for the monastery, establish scholarly affiliations with Western centers of higher education, provide for the translation and publication of important writings currently unavailable to English-speaking and Chinese-speaking people, and establish a sister monastic college in the west.