Early life

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.

Endeavors

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. 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.

Diamond Mountain

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, a Buddhist retreat center and seminary, in Arizona.

Spiritual partnership

In 2003 Geshe Michael revealed that he had been practicing for some time with Christie McNally, in a "spiritual partnership." Although the Gelukpa tradition holds that qualified monastic practitioners do not break their vows when doing this practice, the practice is normally done in secret. Geshe Michael gives two reasons for breaking this tradition and going public. First, it's very difficult to keep secrets of this kind in the age of Google. Second, Buddhism needs to be more inclusive of women if it is going to succeed in America.

Geshe Michael's openness about the practice caused controversy within the Gelugpa community. Dr. Robert Thurman and Lama Surya Das both expressed some skepticism as to Geshe Michael's qualifications. Dr. Thurman is quoted as saying that to be able to do this practice as a monk without breaking one's vows would be "superhuman.". Prior to a planned visit to Dharamsala in the summer of 2006, the Office of the Dalai Lama, an administrative body that manages the Dalai Lama's appearances, requested that, because Geshe Michael's "unconventional behavior does not accord with His Holiness’s teachings and practices," Geshe Michael and Lama Christie not attend the Dalai Lama's scheduled teachings in Dharamsala. The two partners honored this request.

The partnership ended in 2009. A gossip column in the New York Post reported this as a tumultuous breakup. Geshe Michael and Lama Christie continued to teach together at Diamond Mountain in 2010.