Geshe Michael Roach, Buddhist and Yoga Teacher

WARNING: Geshe Michael Roach is a danger to his students, the community and to Buddhism.

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE DANGERS OF GESHE MICHAEL ROACH

The conventional story...

Geshe Michael Roach is the founder and spiritual director of Diamond Mountain. He was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and was raised in Phoenix, AZ. As a student at Princeton University he concentrated his studies in religion and ancient Sanskrit and Russian language.

He met his teacher Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin in 1972 in the U.S. and studied very closely with him after that time. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1983 and is entirely fluent in the spoken and written Tibetan language.

After approximately 20 years of daily intensive study with Khen Rinpoche in New Jersey and at Sera Mey monastery in Southern India, Geshe Michael received the Geshe degree in 1995 (akin to a Doctorate of Divinity). He has also studied extensively at Sera Mey with Geshe Thubten Rinchen, one of the great living scripture teachers. You can read more information on Geshe Michael Roach here. He currently resides at Diamond Mountain University

ACI - Asian Classics Institute

In 1993, Geshe Michael founded the Asian Classics Institute (ACI), a Buddhist teacher-training program. ACI trains everyday Americans, both men and women, in the studies of a Tibetan monk-scholar. Within seven years of disciplined work, in the tradition of the Dalai Lamas, ACI students complete an authentic study covering the five great books of Tibetan Buddhism. The principal of the Institute is that sacred learning should be free of charge, but that students must be dedicated and hard-working to stay in its courses. Classes generally are held in the evenings and on the weekends, so that normal working people can fulfil their spiritual dreams.

Dozens of ACI-trained instructors are now teaching in more than ten countries to thousands of students, and ACI continues to thrive and grow in its New York area home base. Three ACI teachers are resident board members of Diamond Mountain, and they also travel in the U.S. and abroad to teach courses.

The ACI curriculum has also been adapted into a correspondence course program that has distributed more than 75,000 cassette tapes (by 2002) and more than one million pages of course work to students worldwide. The correspondence courses always are provided to students at cost, or for free to students who cannot afford the modest fee. In keeping with our lineage, ACI classes are provided free of charge, and students who are so inclined support their centers through voluntary offerings.

Asian Classics Input Project

The Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP) founded in 1986 by Geshe Michael Roach in collaboration with Tibetan refugees, is dedicated to digitally preserving the classical and sacred Buddhist texts. There is a great danger of forever losing the vast collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures because of the social and political turmoil in Mongolia and Tibet that began in the 20th century, including destruction of most of the libraries and monasteries. ACIP locates rare and endangered canonical texts, sets up computer training and text entry centers in Asia, then digitally compiles and formats these scriptures and places them on the ACIP web site for anyone to download and use for free. At over a dozen cataloguing and input centers in India, Russia and Mongolia, the Project has saved more than 150,000 pages of classical Buddhist texts from ancient India and Tibet. The ACIP database represents the largest single collection of publicly-distributed electronic Tibetan Buddhist scriptures in the world.