Michael Roach (born 1952) is an American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism of the Gelugpa school, and was the first Westerner to qualify for the geshe degree at Sera Monastery in India.
He received the degree after twenty-two years of (part time) training in both India and abroad. He is a scholar in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Russian.
He is currently spiritual director at Diamond Mountain University in Bowie, Arizona, which he founded in 2004.
He has founded several other endeavors in addition, including Andin International in 1981, the Asian Classics Institute (ACI) in 1993, the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP), the Diamond Abbey in New York, and the Enlightened Business Institute.
Roach was born in Los Angeles, California in 1952 to Episcopalian parents and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He was a choirboy at his local church. Roach received the Presidential Scholars Medallion following high school graduation from U.S. President Richard Nixon, then graduated from Princeton University in 1974.
Shortly before his graduation, Roach lost both of his parents to cancer and then his brother to suicide. Following graduation, he moved in to a Buddhist monastery in New Jersey with his lama Sermey Khensur Geshe Lobsang Tharchin.
Roach returned to the United States in 1981 and gave Dharma teachings on WBAI radio in New York City. He went on to found Andin International, a jewelry retailer based in New York.
At Andin, he built a lucrative international business in the diamond industry, turning an initial $50,000 investment into hundreds of millions of dollars. Roach has since left the company and relinquished his holdings, setting up financial endowments to fund various projects.
In 1983 he was ordained as a Buddhist monk and received the geshe degree in 1995.[8] Roach founded the Asian Classics Institute (ACI) in New York in 1993 which offers academic courses on Tibetan Buddhism both as classes in New York and also at no cost via internet download of mp3 lectures and Buddhist readings.
He also founded the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP) which compiles important Buddhist texts on CD-ROM. The project works out of the Asian Classics Institute.
During the 1990s he hosted a television program on public-access television in Manhattan, as well as a weekly broadcast for Mongolia that garnered approximately 500,000 viewers.
He founded Diamond Abbey in New York (a Tibetan training center for monks and nuns) and also the Enlightened Business Institute (an institute that helps train people to make money by implementing Buddhist ethics). Roach also founded Godstow Retreat Center in Redding, Connecticut which is now Do Ngak Kunphen Ling Tibetan Buddhist Center for Universal Peace.
In March 2000 Roach began a three year silent retreat in the Arizona desert which he completed in June 2003. Accompanying him there was his spiritual partner, Christie McNally. In the Fall of 2004, Roach established Diamond Mountain University in Arizona where he serves as director.
Source : Wikipedia
