Michael Roach

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Michael Roach

Michael Roach (* 1952 ) is an American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism at the Gelugpa School. He bears the title Geshe - which was awarded to him by Sera University in Dharamsala after more than 20 years of intensive study of Tibetan Buddhism in the USA and India .

Michael Roach currently teaches Buddhism at the Asian Classics Institute in Phoenix , an organization he founded in 2001 to teach the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. He travels several months a year for lectures and seminars and teaches Buddhist teaching and ethical business management.

Michael Roach was involved in founding Andin Corporation. The institutions he initiated include the Asian Classics Input Project (ACI) and the Diamond Cutter Institute (DCI).

Life

Childhood and youth

Michael Roach was born in 1952 to Episcopal parents in Los Angeles , California and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona . After graduating from high school, he was awarded the Presidential Scholars Medal by US President Richard Nixon. In 1974 he graduated from Princeton University . Towards the end of his studies, he soon lost both parents to cancer, and shortly afterwards his brother committed suicide.

Buddhist study

After these strokes of fate he embarked on a personal spiritual search and came into contact with Tibetan Buddhism on a trip to India. Back in the USA he moved to a Buddhist monastery in New Jersey with his teacher, Lama Sermey Khensu Lobsang Tharchin. He was ordained a Buddhist monk in 1983 and received his Geshe title in 1995.

Andin International

On the instructions of his teacher, he founded Andin International, which is now a globally successful jewelry company based in New York. In 2009, Andin was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway , Warren Buffett's investment company .

Michael Roach left Andin in the late 1990s and used the assets he had acquired to set up various foundations. He used his experience as an entrepreneur for his book "The Diamond Cutter", in which he explains the sutra of the diamond cutter, the Diamond Sutra , in the context of the modern business world. "The Diamond Cutter" has been translated into over 20 languages ​​and sold several million times.

ACI and DCI

From 1993 to 1999 Roach gave a series of courses in Tibetan Buddhism in New York City. These courses form the cornerstone of a seven-year course that covers the Six Great Works of Buddhism.

Roach also founded the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP), which electronically records ancient Buddhist texts that are threatened with loss. ACIP has transcribed and compiled over 8,500 works - nearly half a million pages - and made them available for free. ACIP also ensures a steady income for many Tibetan refugees. During the 1990s, Roach had a television show in Manhattan and a weekly show for Mongolia, which had approximately 500,000 viewers. He founded Diamond Abbey in New York (Tibetan training for monks and nuns) and the Diamond Cutter Institute (an institution that helps people become successful by applying Buddhist teachings). Roach also founded the Godstow Retreat Center in Redding, Connecticut, now called Do Ngak Kunphen Ling Tibetan Buddhist Center for Universal Peace.

Three year retreat in the Arizona Desert and Diamond Mountain

From 2000 to 2003 Roach withdrew with five other participants for a classic three-year silent retreat in the Arizona desert.

In the fall of 2004, Roach and his partner, Christie McNally, began building Diamond Mountain, a Buddhist retreat and seminar center in Arizona. Here they taught the eighteen-course study of the Vajrayana path. These eighteen advanced courses were completed for the first time in 2010. Another three-year retreat with first-year students from Diamond Mountain began in 2010 in the specially established valley on the Diamond Mountain site.

Spiritual partnership and controversy

Although they are usually celibate, in some cases Gelugpa monks practice what is known as karmamudrā (a yoga practice that involves sexual acts) without breaking their religious vows. In the Gelupga lineage, this practice is considered one of the highest spiritual teachings of all and is the prerequisite for enlightenment in this life. This practice is only allowed to very experienced monks with years of spiritual practice and exceptional spiritual abilities and requires the approval of high lamas. Michael Roach and Christie McNally, his student at the time, founded such a partnership in 1998 and initially kept it secret - as tradition dictates. Both took personal vows, one of which was that they would never be more than 15 feet apart.

In 2003 they realized that it is impossible in today's world to live spiritual partnerships in secret and made their partnership public. This led to some controversy within Buddhist communities in both the US and India. In order not to appear improper, Roach and McNally were asked not to attend a lecture given by the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in 2006. The partnership ended in 2009. Christie McNally has since been married to Ian Thorson and began another three-year retreat in the Arizona desert in 2010. Roach and McNally continue to teach together, currently interrupted by this same retreat. Both teach as part of the retreat teachings held twice a year at the Diamond Mountain Retreat Center in Arizona. In April 2012, Christie McNally's husband, Ian Thorson, died in the Arizona desert in the immediate vicinity of the Diamond Retreat under circumstances that have not yet been finally clarified.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/us/mysterious-yoga-retreat-ends-in-a-grisly-death.html
personal data
SURNAME Roach, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Buddhism teacher
DATE OF BIRTH 1952