Via commenter yoyogi, here is another perspective/opinion article by Matthew Remski about Diamond Mountain and the death of Ian Thorson.
I want to emphasize that I have no first-hand knowledge of Michael Roach, his students, or the happenings at Diamond Mountain, so please don't site me as an authority about any of this. However, at least some of what Remski writes (under the subhead Scrutiny of Roach's Metaphysics: Gelukpa or New-Age?) is corroborated by people who claim to be Roach's students.
For example:
"After Roach and McNally came out of the yurt in 2003 and declared their partnership, their supporters (cued by their public statements) began to claim that spiritual partnership is common within Gelukpa tantric practice, and acceptable for qualified monks, although it normally remains hidden. Some supporters still claim that the Dalai Lama has spoken publicly about his own spiritual consorts, but none provide references to this point."
I've seen these claims made a number of times, and I do believe this is what Roach is telling his students. And it's hooey. There are some schools of Tibetan Buddhism in which lama/priests/teachers often are not celibate, but Gelugpa is not one of them.
Even within Gelugpa, when Roach began his relationship with Christie McNally he had the option of disrobing and declaring himself to be a layperson and not a monk, and he could have continued to teach with Gelugpa's institutional approval. His attempt to cling to both McNally and his monk's robes struck me as deeply dishonest when I first heard about it way back when, and it still does.
Even if "spiritual partnerships" were practiced in Gelugpa, such tantric partnerships involve two partners who are both advanced practitioners of tantra, not a 40-something monk and a 20-something new student, as Roach and McNally were when their relationship began.
And I do believe that if His Holiness the Dalai Lama had ever spoken publicly about his own spiritual consorts, there'd be references to it all over the Web. Every time the man so much as coughs it gets in the news somewhere.
I also once read part of Roach's book The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life. It was about using spiritual power to make oneself wealthy and successful. It was very New Age stuff; more The Secret than The Dharma. After that I could not take Roach seriously as a Buddhist teacher.
He also has, according to a commenter on this site, changed the meaning of the 6th Mahayana precept from "don't gossip about the faults of others in the community, lay or ordained" to "don't criticize the ordained clergy."Â He appears to be making the teachings up to suit himself as he goes along.
Beyond that, I have no way to know whether things said of Roach in Remski's article are true or not. Note that a person named Frank Jude Boccio, who is identified as a Zen priest, is quoted extensively. I cannot verify that Boccio is a Zen priest, which doesn't mean he isn't one, just that I cannot confirm it.
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