On this rural dirt road near the town of Bowie, not far from the foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains, there’s hardly any noise during the day. At night, the quiet is disturbed only by chirping crickets and the yips of coyotes in the nearby hills.
But on April 22, the sounds of a helicopter disturbed this idyllic desert setting in southeastern Arizona, disrupting the intentional quiet of more than 34 people who are in the midst of a three-plus-year-long silent Buddhist retreat at a community and school called Diamond Mountain.
An Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter based in Tucson was responding to an emergency call, headed to a cave-like dwelling not far from the Diamond Mountain property. No one is sure how long 38-year-old Ian Thorson and his 39-year-old wife, Christie McNally, had been living in the cave, but when responders got there, they discovered Thorson’s lifeless body, and a delirious McNally.
The helicopter transported Thorson’s body to the Cochise County Medical Examiner’s Office. According to reports in the Arizona Range News, McNally was treated for dehydration at Northern Cochise Community Hospital in Willcox and released. No wrongdoing was suspected, and Thorson’s death was attributed to exposure and dehydration.
“I can’t help but still think Ian would be alive today if the whole thing had been done differently,” said Jerry Kelly, looking out at the Diamond Mountain campus from the screened porch of his home. He’s convinced that if responders had taken a different route—across the Diamond Mountain property, rather than across Bureau of Land Management property—or if someone from the retreat had broken retreat rules and left to get help, the outcome would have been different.
For the past few years, Kelly said, he’s found himself in an unusual situation: He’s a complete outsider who has befriended many Diamond Mountain students. Judging from what he knows about the retreat firsthand, and from rumors he’s heard over the years, Kelly said he’s surprised that trouble didn’t come sooner.
“These people are in complete isolation, and I don’t know if they are all really equipped to deal with that,” Kelly said. “There are a few older people, and a younger person that I think about and worry about. I’ve worried that they could even be targets of drug-smugglers or the elements.”
Kelly said he was told McNally used a satellite emergency phone to tell a volunteer at Diamond Mountain that she needed assistance. That call went out at 9 a.m.
Kelly heard the helicopter arrive around 3 p.m.
There’s a black-and-white photo of McNally and Thorson that has been used repeatedly by national media outlets since the story gained traction over the summer. It shows the couple smiling in what looks like a moment of genuine bliss and happiness. If the photo had been accompanied by an article about a couple who became lost in the desert, most of us in Southern Arizona would probably shake our heads at yet another tragic death-in-the-desert story.
However, this is hardly about a backpacking trip gone wrong.
The Tucson Weekly first wrote about Diamond Mountain in 2003, two years after a Buddhist group led by Michael Roach, who describes himself as the first American to earn the title of geshe, purchased 1,000 acres of desert just south of the small town of Bowie.
Roach says he studied in southern India at the Sera Monastery. In his book, The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life, Roach wrote about how his teacher told him to go back to America and start a business to bring Buddhism into the American office. After working 16 years in New York City as the director of a jewelry manufacturer, and founding the Asian Classics Input Project and the Asian Classics Institute, Roach came to Arizona to start Diamond Mountain with his students.
Roach, called Geshe Michael or Geshela Michael by his students, a title used by Gelugpa Buddhist scholars, was involved in controversies long before Thorson, his former student, died in April. Roach drew criticism from American and Tibetan Buddhists alike for wearing his hair long, rather than shaving his head, and for wearing regular clothing—atypical for someone who claims to be an ordained monk.
He sparked more controversy when he showed up at teachings with McNally, whom he introduced as his spiritual partner following an earlier three-year retreat in the Dragoon Mountains. Another area of controversy followed when Roach gave McNally the title of “lama,” and her students at Diamond Mountain called her Lama Christie. Roach also wrote to his teachers that he considered McNally a goddess.
Calls for Roach to renounce his vows, from prominent Buddhists such as Robert Thurman, were ignored by Roach.
Roach and McNally went so far as to wear matching rings and were known to never be more than 15 feet apart from each other, even reading the same book together and eating off the same plate. All along, Roach said, he remained true to his vows as a Buddhist monk and was celibate, because he and McNally practiced a different form of intimacy.
Attempts to contact Roach for this story were unsuccessful. But I did receive a response to an email sent to The Knowledge Base, a website described as “an ongoing project to preserve and publish the life work of Geshe Michael Roach, one of the modern world’s most prolific teachers of Buddhism, yoga and meditation.”
Ora Maimes, the project’s executive director, wrote, “I will forward your request to Geshe Michael’s assistants who help manage his schedule and correspondence. … Please know, however, that after numerous interviews in which he was misquoted and misrepresented (by) the press on this matter, he has been declining further interviews, and is focusing his limited time on teaching and his numerous humanitarian projects.”
The Weekly discussed Roach and McNally’s relationship in a 2005 story about a relationship workshop the couple held in Tucson. Roach is quoted as saying, “Many people ask us about our relationship, because I’m a monk. … We have a tradition that, after you’ve been trained for enough years, a monk should have a relationship with a special lady. … You work together, not like a normal couple, not like most couples. You work for spiritual things. … You dedicate your relationship. … And then when you look at the other person, you should see a special person—not a human being, but an angel.”
It wasn’t until after Thorson’s death that Roach’s students discovered that Roach and McNally had been legally married and divorced, according to Michael Brannan, a former Roach student who lives in Bowie and still volunteers at Diamond Mountain.
“After Ian died, I decided I could no longer live there and made the decision on my own to move into town, but it’s still an important place to me,” he said.
Brannan said that when he learned that McNally and Roach had been married, he realized that Roach’s story that he and McNally were spiritual partners was a farce.
“He broke his vows as a monk,” Brannan said, adding that he wrote to the Diamond Mountain board of directors and asked that it cut ties with Roach to help Diamond Mountain regain credibility. “The critical eye of American Buddhism is looking at Diamond Mountain. A young man died.”
Brannan claims that in response, Roach told the board that Brannan was no longer welcome to attend teaching events, but Brannan continues to volunteer by relieving caretakers assigned to provide food and other needs for each of the people in silent retreat.
In 2005, the school began preparations for a three-plus-year silent retreat—a process that started with the development of infrastructure for retreat buildings and the introduction of students to more Buddhist studies, silent meditation and yoga, to prepare them for the challenges of the retreat.
Those interested in helping the school, like Brannan, dug trenches for plumbing and other chores. Those who wanted to be part of the three-plus-year retreat, also called the Great Retreat, or the Retreat for Peace, took it upon themselves to build their own cabins at their own expense in a remote area chosen for the retreat. They would live in the cabins during the retreat, but it was understood that the cabins were Diamond Mountain property.
On the Diamond Mountain website is a blog with posts from various participants—board members, caretakers and those going into retreat—documenting the construction of the cabins and the mental preparations involved. The project also included cabins for Roach and McNally, who planned to follow their students into the retreat.
That plan changed when McNally left Roach for Thorson in 2010. The new plan had McNally going into retreat with Thorson, and signing on as the retreat director. Meanwhile, Roach would be at Diamond Mountain a few times a year to do teachings.
In February, things got more complicated when McNally said during a retreat teaching session that Thorson had acted aggressively toward her, and that she tried to help him by practicing a form of martial arts with a samurai sword she had in her possession. She said she ended up stabbing him several times.
According to a letter dated April 26, written by Roach and posted on the Diamond Mountain website following Thorson’s death, Roach said that after an investigation by the Diamond Mountain board and Roach, McNally and Thorson were asked to leave the retreat and the Diamond Mountain property.
“I write this letter at the request of many friends of the University around the world. It has been a very sad and difficult week for all of us, mourning and trying to understand the loss of one of our oldest friends; a dear, courageous and dedicated spiritual seeker. I know the parents and other relatives of the affected families well, and I know that this has been a heart-wrenching time for them, too. We are deeply sorry for the loss that they and Ian’s wife, Lama Christie McNally, are surely feeling,” Roach wrote.
He wrote that McNally had recounted what Roach described as “serious incidents of mutual spousal abuse” between herself and Thorson.
“Lama Christie described what sounded like repeated physical abuse of herself by her husband, and also an incident in which she had stabbed Ian with a knife, under what she described as a spiritual influence.
“These statements of course caused great concern to the board of directors, and we also received many expressions of concern and confusion from retreatants’ parents, families, students and friends of DMU. The board immediately initiated an inquiry, and in my own public talk on the following day, I stated that we had a moral and legal responsibility to conduct such an investigation. Our entire lineage is of course founded upon the principle of nonviolence, and the sacredness of all life. I made it clear that such violence would not be tolerated in a place of spiritual light and happiness.”
Roach wrote that there had been past complaints about Thorson’s behavior, which resulted in Thorson being asked to leave the campus at another time.
“Some of us felt that Lama Christie, by mentioning the abuse publicly at the only talk which I attended, was making a conscious or unconscious cry for help,” Roach continued. “I think it’s important to mention here that I do not personally believe that these were acts of malice.”
The condolences offered in Roach’s letter have meant little to Thorson’s mother. According to television news interviews and a story in The New York Times, Kay Thorson told reporters that she thinks Diamond Mountain is a cult and that Roach is a dangerous leader. She said that she once hired cult deprogrammers to work with her son and help him leave Roach. He left for a short time, she said, but returned.
However, McNally herself posted an account of the events that led to her and Thorson’s dismissal from Diamond Mountain. It was posted on scribd.com on April 19, three days before the death of Thorson. (There is also a statement that is written by two people identified as McNally’s caretakers, which was posted April 22, which discusses events surrounding Thorson’s death.)
The April 19 post, titled “A Shift in the Matrix Dispelling Darkness by Shining Light to the World,” gives a detailed account of what happened between her and Thorson, and how they were exiled by the board.
“Dearest friends,” she wrote, “I am writing now from deep retreat because I feel there is great need. … My last retreat teaching seemed to create quite a commotion! So many crazy rumors! It is quite hard for me to believe that anyone would actually have some of the misconceptions I have heard about, especially those who have been close students of mine for so many years.”
McNally said she had written to the board explaining why her expulsion was wrong. She said she was disappointed that she and Thorson were not given enough time to prepare to leave, and that she wasn’t allowed to help the remaining students prepare for her absence.
“Just before we left to our retreat place in the sky, my Love and I sat on the side of a craggy hill, tucked away in our sleeping bag, gazing out over the retreat valley and wondering what will happen,” McNally wrote. “This land is so beautiful. It is so strange that there is so much strife. I do believe the retreatants and I have healed much, but there is still much to go.”
I tried to contact McNally through an email address on a website publicizing a book she wrote, and I also sent a message to what is identified as Lama Christie McNally’s Facebook page. No one has responded; there is a blog post that claims McNally left the country for India after Thorson’s death to meet with a former teacher.
Brannan said he believes Roach didn’t know the couple had taken to the hills to continue their retreat. “This put some people in a difficult position, being equally loyal to both Michael and Christie,” Brannan said. “They didn’t tell Michael what was really going on, and (they) tried to get supplies to Christie. They knew where they were, but never told anyone.”
Those people are suspected of leaving food that emergency responders found at the base of the hill where McNally and Thorson were living. McNally reportedly told responders that she and Thorson had grown too weak to climb up and down the hill to retrieve the supplies.
Brannan said it’s his understanding that the followers who left the food are no longer in Arizona.
Below where the retreat cabins are located on the Diamond Mountain campus, there’s a camp area with several trailers, yurts, other structures and the community’s temple, built entirely from adobe bricks. Diamond Mountain caretaker Chuck Vedova met me outside of the temple. I told him I wanted to find out how to reach Roach, and that I had been told to ask for the resident nun.
Vedova said he could talk to me, and invited me to sit in the community’s kitchen, which is housed in a yurt outfitted with refrigeration and plumbing.
Vedova, who said he is originally from New Jersey, talked about the work he and other volunteers did to prepare Diamond Mountain for the retreat, which started on Dec. 30, 2010.
“It’s a retreat that goes for three years, three months and three days,” he said.
During our discussion—which included an explanation of the different branches of Buddhism, including that Roach is part of the Gelugpa branch—Vedova said, “Diamond Mountain is not a commune; it’s not a residential community. That’s not its purpose. It’s a school, but right now, its purpose is the retreat.”
Vedova communicates in writing with several of the retreatants, and delivers their food and mail at locations near the retreat cabins. If there are problems, retreatants leave notes for the caretakers.
“You can’t have a retreat without caretakers. I came here to serve,” he said.
Vedova said retreatants know about Thorson’s death, and that Roach visited them to explain what happened. When I asked about the controversies surrounding Roach, and now possibly Diamond Mountain, Vedova said they weren’t issues to him. When I asked specifically about Roach being married to McNally, he explained that such relationships are not uncommon for Tibetan monks, who have had female spiritual partnerships going back 600 years.
“But it was never discussed. It was secret, but was going on all along,” Vedova said.
Speaking of Thorson’s death, Vedova brought his hands together and noted that I wasn’t the first reporter to come to Diamond Mountain. Although the story gets told over and over again, Vedova said he wonders if anyone cares about the people still at Diamond Mountain who considered McNally an important teacher, and Thorson a friend.
“We lost a lama and a friend,” he said. “Someone honored as a lama is gone and was asked to leave. Our friend is gone. The caretakers knew him, and no one is asking us how we feel that our friend is dead.”
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2012.
This article has nothing to do with the Buddha, and I think your headline was poorly chosen. Its like writing an article about the polygamous Mormons in Arizona City and calling it “Jesus in the Desert”. Argh!
Please research what Buddhism is about and the fact that a Buddhist monk cannot be married or have a “partner”. Buddhism is a religion founded more than 2600 years ago by the Buddha. The image of the Buddha is sacred to Buddhists and the cover page is disrespectful showing the Buddha in the dirt, with dirt on his face, and words on his face. You misspelled Buddha and I ask you to apologize to Buddhists for this image and publish a retraction of your error saying that Roach and his followers are Buddhists. I am a Buddhist and Roach and his followers are calling themselves Buddhists but they are not. Roach created his own “religion”. There is nothing is Buddhism about a 3 year, 3 day silent retreat either. From an American Buddhist in Tucson.
Tucson Weekly, Sept 6-12, 2012, published a story “Buddha in the Desert,” by Mari Herreras and an image on its front page. After reading this story and seeing the cover, I feel responsible to comment, as one of the Buddhist community leaders in Tucson. I am an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk from Thailand and have lived in Tucson since 2000. I am Abbot of Wat Buddhametta: Tucson Buddhist Meditation Center since its founding in February, 2010. Tucson and indeed the United States is a good home for many Buddhists from all around world for decades. Many Buddhists have lived and still live in Tucson. First, the image of the Buddha as depicted on the front page is offensive and disrespectful. The person who designed this front page intentionally depicted the Buddha image on the ground, threw dirt on the Buddha’s face, and covered it with words. He or she desecrated the Buddha image in this way and by placing “BUDDAH” covering his forehead and “DESERT” covering his mouth. He or she also misspelled the name, Buddha. All this is very disrespectful toward a religious object, in this case, the image of the Buddha. The story which Herreras wrote has NOTHING to do with the Buddha and his peaceful philosophy BUT it is about the man whose name is Michael Roach and his followers at Diamond Mountain in Bowie. Buddhism is a religion founded by the Buddha, more than 2600 years ago, not a cult. The picture on the front page should be the picture of Michael Roach NOT the Buddha. In the eyes of Buddhist monastic communities, Michael Roach is NOT recognized as a monk. Why? Because Buddhist monastic persons, similar to many other monastics in other religions, CANNOT BE MARRIED or have a “partner”. That was why the Buddha renounced his worldly life as a married prince to become a monk in the first place. Herreras did a very poor job on researching information about this story related to Buddhism. But Herreras did a good job presenting the man who died in the desert, his wife, and ex-husband of his wife. I ask the Tucson Weekly to publish a retraction of the errors about Buddhism and apologizing for their desecration of the Buddha image.
There are con men and women in all religions. There are cults that pretend to have a spiritual aspect but are only there to prey on others. This was one of those instances. A threat to the “…future of American Buddhism” not hardly since there is no “American Buddhism” there are only students of the Buddha’s teachings. Regarding your cover we should respect all religions this was not one of those occasions for you.
Tucson Weekly! Really…what were you thinking when you allowed such a disrespectful depiction of a religious figure on the cover of your paper? The story wasn’t about Buddhism (which is quite obvious when you read the article). It’s about a person who abused the trust of his followers and this person is a con man. Michael Roach should’ve been your cover image…not one of a peaceful, compassionate religious figure.. Reading this article was like reading any other story in the National Enquirer or some other gossip magazine. Or, a an eighth graders ill attempt at writing a piece of informational text. You…The Tucson Weekly…should retract the cover and the story and apologize to the entire Tucson Buddhist Community.
I have to agree with the others here. The article is NOT about Buddha, or even Buddhism as it’s understood by most practitioners. It’s about a small group of isolated and idiosyncratic people that in no way reflect the traditions of Buddhism, either in America or elsewhere. It should have had Mr. Roach’s pic on the cover, but I’m guessing you were worried about lawsuits and such.
To place dirt on the image of the Buddha and to cover his mouth is highly offensive to most traditional Buddhists, particularly NON-American ones who have nothing to do with Mr. Roach, and you guys have shown a serious lack of multicultural awareness by doing this.
Definitely a ‘foot in mouth’ moment for the Tucson Weekly.
The death of an ousted Diamond Mountain resident raises questions about cults—and the future of American Buddhism. What does the death of one individual have to do with the future of American Buddhism? Confused, as to what this article really met to tell us.
As a Buddhist, I read your cover story on the death at Diamond Mountain with interest. As others have already pointed out, the cover photo of the Buddha is extremely offensive to Buddhists, of which there are many in Tucson. I am surprised and disappointed at the insensitivity and lack of cultural awareness by a publication that I enjoy reading each week.
Michael Roach’s defiance of even the Buddha’s most fundamental rules for monks in order to satisfy his own selfish desires and motives is the very antithesis of Buddhism. It has earned him the censure of the Buddhist community at large, including his own former teachers and the Dalai Lama. Michael Roach no more represents Buddhism than Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church represent Christianity, and that cannot be over-emphasized.
Michael Roach is the person who has been heaping filth on the Buddha’s teachings and at the monastic Sangha (at least the Geluk lineage) of Tibetan Buddhism with his nasty-minded, self-aggrandizing, slanderous lies. The parroting of such drivel by devotee Vedova — even after tragedy has publicly exposed the lies of Mr. Roach and his ex-wife — is a sad commentary on the hold that con-artists can exercise over the minds of their victims.
Given that Mr. Roach continues promoting his world-wide ministries, your article may help save some well-meaning, naive spiritual seeker from falling for Roach’s bait.
I read the Tucson Weekly regularly and was greatly dismayed to see the cover of the most recent issue. There are approximately 400,000,000 Buddhists in the world and 500,000 in the United States. Michael Roach is not accepted by almost ALL of these practitioners as a Buddhist, so this tragedy had NOTHING to do with the future of Buddhism in the United States. As an ordained Buddhist teacher in the tradition of Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Thich Nhat Hanh, I was shocked by the ignorance about Buddhism in this article–you even spelled Buddha (Buddah) wrong on the cover! Buddhists tend to be very tolerant people, but I ask that you please consider an apology to all of the Buddhists in our community that promote peace, compassion and mindful living for errors and insensitivity in this article.
Elizabeth Looks like the graphic is gone.I’m sure it was just a lack of knowledge about your religion.If you have seen the misplaced Buddha’s I have installed in high end Yoggini/trophy wives foothills McMansions as fountains, hat racks and key holders it would really drive you to drink. You might dismount from your high horse and answer the question that i find interesting.Why haven’t any of your Tucson leaders voiced concern about the Rev. Roach in the last 10 years?
you Theravadins should not trash Vajrayana/Tibetan Buddhism so much.
Until about 500 years after the Buddha’s entry into parinirvana, there were no Buddha images. The images that were shown were typically of a stylized foot, or hand, or sheaf of wheat. Buddhists from that time might have wondered at the depictions we see now. The idea of getting offended by a particular piece of imagery is difficult to fathom.
The Buddhist teachings focus on ideas, not imagery. We are instructed not to mistake the teacher for the teaching. So all this talk about Buddhists being “offended” by the imagery doesn’t make any sense in the context of the actual teachings of the Buddha; if you, as a Buddhist, did in fact feel offense, then this seems like a ripe opportunity for practice and contemplation.
I thought this was a very sensitively done article, and appreciate the fact that it did not sink into sensationalism as so many other stories about this sad series of events have. There is no delight to be had in the woe that befalls others.
Why she didn’t mention the Kali blood letting,semi naked secret semi nude initiation attended by over 100 Roachheads where a communion of Lama Christies toe nails and vaginal secretions were offered to followers is beyond me.
As to the mention that “looks like the graphic is gone” by corvid, the graphic is on the home page of this site as of today. I too was bewildered by the title of the article as it was not discussed in any way in the story, “raises questions about cults and American Buddhism.” Apparently the supposition is that Roach is a mainstream example of American Buddhism, which he clearly is not. From what the story says and what I have read elsewhere about Roach, he is the leader of a cult. To try to link cults with American Buddhism shows a lack of research about American Buddhism, which is actually just Buddhism under its two major branches, Theravada and Mahayana. There are also traditions within Mahayana especially such as Tibetan Buddhism.
It’s so funny to hear all of you “Buddhists” trouncing a group and a place and a teacher that you’ve never even met. Has any of you heard of a guy named Gautama Buddha who taught (and I paraphrase) that unless you are someone (enlightened) like me, you can never know what is in another’s mind, so you must never judge another. It’s possible that Michael Roach married Christie McNally for reasons you do not understand. It’s possible that his understanding of how the teachings can thrive in the context of this culture is different also. Not to overstate the obvious or put Geshe Michael Roach on any A lists that offend your egocentricity, but Jesus and Je Tsongkapa also made a few changes along the way– that’s how both Christianity and the Gelugpa tradition got started. Right or wrong, correct or misguided, you are not the arbiters of his or any man’s path. You have never been to Diamond Mountain. You do not know those students or teachers. Your information is largely third-hand. As I recall, Lord Buddha was not a Buddhist– that came a while later, as all religions do, when people look back at the holiness of their teachers and decide that what they taught was worth preserving. With due respect for my constitutionally protected rights to privacy and freedom of religion, I feel no need to judge the personal, spiritual or legal practices or relationships of Geshe Michael Roach or Lama Christie McNally, and I consider myself blessed to have learned what they taught, regardless of whether it is labeled “Buddhist” in your terms. If “Buddhism” has taught me anything, it is that more than one path has meaning.
the Playboy article on the Roach Cult is coming out on Feb 19th.
Yes, dear Laurie Post. But when I realized that many of my family members and close friends started dying like flies after I got acquainted with those “teachers” and this “holy” site, and after I myself started to suffer exponentially and later became extremely ill and almost died, the unholiness of this place and all teachers there promoting themselves as aryas and enlightened beings became unquestionable. In fact the unholiness of many Tibetan masters connected to this particular lineage and location became unquestionable as well. Karma is karma, but people keep forgetting that karma can also be manipulated and that those laws can be knowingly misused even by the so called enlightened Tibetan masters in order to shorten the lifespan of one person, or elevate another to a higher status as well as worry-free life. Corruption has happened before in Tibet on many different levels and it affected this Gelugpa lineage as well. It’s been documented here and there to some degree. I believe that the western world became so preoccupied and obsessed with everything Tibetan that it lost touch with reality. It’s good to keep in mind that it’s probably even much quicker to lose it when you have a westerner in this case an American promoting it in such a convincing way. All I can say from my own experience is that after throwing myself at those teachers’ feet for many many years and living on the premises term after term, I finally saw through them. And what I’ve discovered will forever remain my own little secret. It takes great intelligence to perceive the hidden corruption within a particular lineage just like it takes great wisdom to perceive its holiness. It also takes great courage to withdraw oneself, cut ties with such a lineage and act upon it.
In regards to Roach’s marriage it should be noted that when he and McNally tied the knot in Christian ceremony their Tibetan Lama, Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin was fully aware of it. Under such circumstances not only Roach broke all of his vows but his major spiritual teacher broke them as well. What kind of Tibetan-Buddhist Lama would allow his student who was a monk to marry. It looks like Khen Rinpoche had very low self-esteem and didn’t take his own monkshood seriously because he accepted Christian authority of another for Roach and McNally over his own. It’s very unethical, unmoral, un-Buddhist and certainly not in accordance with the principles or ethics of Christianity.