Deep practice within the retreat, when a monk meditates in secluded caves, is a stronghold of Buddhism in Tibet. During such practice, he usually confirms his ability to become a great teacher. However, outside of Tibet, such retreats make less sense than in the historical setting of the feudal world. The human mind is fragile enough that isolation can act as an echo chamber. For the participants of the retreat, a trip to the "Diamond Mountain" acquired the meaning of a ritual: here they could try to increase their awareness, sharpness of mind, here they could minimize contact with the ordinary world, replacing it with pictures of their consciousness, their ideas, which should take a central place in their daily life. For better or worse, Roach and McNally came out of their first big retreat a different person than they were when they started. For the most part, this is due to physical changes in the brain.
In its purest form, meditation is a way of observing your mind in an isolated setting. By calming the body and observing how thoughts come and go, the experienced meditator will be able to realize and discover amazing facts about his physiology and psychology. Meditation, to use a comparison, is like putting your mind in a laboratory and watching it work by itself. Although everyone's experience is different, people often feel like walls are moving, they hear sounds that shouldn't be there, or they notice changes in light intensity, feel unexplained speeding up or slowing down the passage of time. Neurologists have found that in the long term, the practice of meditation can lead to changes in the chemical composition of the brain matter, and such retreats, even of short duration, can provoke significant physical changes in the neurological status of the meditating person.

Illustration: Lama Christie speaks on the topic of spiritual spouse relationships to a lecture audience of 1,000 (City Building, Taipei).

Whatever changes occur during short daily meditations, their effect is only enhanced in retreats with the practice of silence. Although comprehensive clinical studies addressing potential negative side effects such retreats are just emerging (one of them - led by Willoughby Britton, a neuroscientist at Brown University - is in its second year), it has already become clear that some people overreact to isolation and self-analysis of the workings of the mind. Some lose touch with reality or fall into psychotic states. The whole world considers meditation a way of self-improvement, but according to the results of a study conducted at Stanford University in 1984 by psychologist Leon Otis, covering 574 participants in transcendental meditation (and this is a rather mild form of practice), 70% of those who meditated for a long time developed signs of mental disorders.
Another explanation is that we often expect too much from meditation. From a young age, we live in tales of superheroes and Jedi who are able to perform incredible feats thanks to their innate characteristics and intensive study. We hear stories of yogi levitation and the power of the chakras, of tai chi and badass Shaolin monks, and so we quietly assume that, why not, anything is possible.
McNally's rapid rise to the status of Vajrayogini and lama reflects these nascent aspirations. For those who are not yet as quickly anointed to such a realm, religion offers a clear method: meditate more often, keep your vows, and, if you are in a hurry, start practicing tantra.
From a certain point of view, Roach's approach was successful. Panel members noted that during the period that Roach and McNally were in a relationship, attendance at events and lectures was as high as ever. They taught together, and their mutual trust and sincerity seemed to confirm that there is an opportunity for all to attain enlightenment. Since it was possible to bring a spiritual spouse with them, couples could also join in and work together on their spiritual practice, rather than practicing alone, according to the more common tradition.

After the 2003 retreat, Roach and McNally continued their spiritual journey. To outside observers, it looked less and less like Tibetan Buddhism, but more like a new belief that combined elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and a good dose of good old acting. They co-authored half a dozen books on Tibetan meditation, yoga and business ethics, one of which was a bestseller.
Sid Johnson, a musician who briefly served on the Diamond Mountain board of directors, began to fear in 2005 that the band was relying too heavily on magical thinking. Such fears arose during his secret initiation into the practice of the bull-headed tantric deity Yamantaka, whose name is translated as "overcoming death." As part of the four-day ritual, all initiates had to meet personally in the yurt with Geshe Michael and Lama Christie, as they were called by the disciples, in order to undergo the ritual of final emancipation, which would help them overcome death. Johnson was very worried when he entered the room blindfolded and heard that Roach asked him to lie down on the bed. As he lay down, McNally began massaging his chakras from his head to his penis. "I don't know who took off my pants, but it was part of the blessing," Johnson said. At the end of the ritual, he sat up - still blindfolded - and then felt McNally's lips on his lips. They kissed. “Part of the rite of passage is that your lama offers you a spouse, and Geshe Michael teaches that what happens in the metaphysical world must also happen in the real world,” Johnson said. Then, he said, they all giggled like kids at summer camp, like they were breaking a taboo, but no one would know. Ten minutes later Johnson came out and they asked Johnson's wife to come in, alone. Altogether, the couple personally initiated almost 20 disciples that evening.

Illustration: Discourse on Spiritual Spouses in a Christian Church, Arizona, USA

By most accounts, McNally came to the fore in these spiritual productions. It was as if Roach had stepped back and allowed his wife to teach philosophy and meditation in his stead. “When she spoke, he seemed to be distracted and not taking part; just stared up at the ceiling as she spoke, as if distancing herself from what Christie would say,” said Michael Brennan, another longtime student who now volunteers at Diamond Mountain. He called her Vajrayogine. Can you imagine your spouse and guru elevating you to the rank of deity?”
Despite being a lama, McNally wanted to prove that she, too, could be a leader. She pushed for a second big retreat, even bigger than the first. Instead of a few modest yurts on a desert site, they will build dozens of highly efficient self-cooling structures using solar panels - and these structures, capable of accommodating dozens of retreat participants for a long period, will form a permanent infrastructure in the Diamond Mountain area. Roach and McNally planned to hold a retreat in the desert for 38 people to see the void directly. They had no shortage of followers to pay for this project.
Participants were required to build and pay for their own cabins, and it was expected that at the end of the retreat, the cabins would become the property of Diamond Mountain. Modest houses cost about $100,000, while more luxurious dwellings were estimated at about $300,000. Volunteers and contractors have been working on projects for several years, while Roach and McNally have been training spiritual seekers in the philosophy and methods of meditation.

Illustration: Roach

By mid-2010, plans began to take shape for a second major retreat, but Roach and McNally's relationship fell apart. The reasons for the split are not clear. Members of the group mentioned Roach's illicit sexual relations with other students and implicit struggles for theological power. No one knows for sure, neither Roach nor McNally have commented on their breakup for this article, but its repercussions reverberated throughout the community.
Michael Brennan recalls that "a lot of people just sort of traded partners," including McNally. Former band member Ekan Thomason recalled that Thorson dropped off his then-girlfriend with a sleeping bag near her home and disappeared into the desert. The next time Thomason saw Thorson, he and McNally were dancing under a disco ball at a party at the Diamond Mountain Temple. In October 2010, McNally and Thorson married in a Christian ceremony in Montauk, New York. Faced with the need to conduct a retreat with the practice of silence along with his ex-wife, Roach quietly withdrew and handed over the leadership of the retreat to McNally.

In the second big retreat in the desert, she could test her leadership skills as a spiritual guide. In the isolation of the retreat, she would have spent almost seven years in silence meditation. The skill of such high level not many Buddhists possess, even in Tibet. She will become the spiritual mentor of 38 people, including her new husband - and for him she was both a guru, and a goddess, and a wife - so she had to give them something special. And she found it outside of Tibetan Buddhism. Her something special is the Hindu goddess Kali.
Kali is not an ordinary deity of the Hindu pantheon. Although several major temples are dedicated to her, including the famous Temple of Kali at Dakshinewar near Kolkata. By tradition, most Hindus remember her name only in situations where the use of force is required, or in times of war. In the 1700s The English colonialists popularized and exaggerated stories of thugs (the name is associated with the English word "bandit, cutthroat") devoted to Kali, who killed unsuspecting travelers on secluded roads and sacrificed their bodies to the goddess in order to receive magical powers. Some Hindus who are addicted to tantric practice, which is usually very different from Buddhist tantra, sometimes turn to Kali to gain female spiritual power, shakti. Although Kali is considered untamed, wild and dangerous, it seems that McNally wanted to call on the goddess during her tantric meditation in order to accelerate her progress towards enlightenment.
In October 2009, McNally hosted a 10-day Kali empowerment with over one hundred potential devotees. She decorated the temple with weapons—swords, pistols, crossbows, chainsaws, and formidable garden implements—to show the warlike nature of the deity. As part of a symbolic rite reminiscent of the currently banned tugi cult in India, members of the group were "kidnapped" on their way from one sacred site to another and, to increase their fear, were put in a small wooden box. Nearby, Roach performed his own version of this ritual. Ekan Thomason met Lama Christie in a building called the Lama Cathedral. There, McNally gave her a medical lancet. “Kali wants something from you. She wants your blood,” McNally said and ran her finger along the sharp edge of the knife, reminding Thomason of a handsome, swashbuckling pirate.

The purpose of the ceremony is to scare the participants, but the ceremony elicited different reactions from them. Some came to regard McNally as an impeccable teacher and hoped to learn from her in spite of this theatricality. Others feared Diamond Mountain's appeal to a dark, occult version of Hinduism. But a year later, almost 40 retreat participants retreated to the valley from the rest of the world under the guidance of the only spiritual guide, Lama Christie.
In the months leading up to the retreat in 2010, group members showed signs of stress as more and more students lost the ability to separate the spiritual world, which they were trying to access through meditation, and the real world, where actions had quite predictable consequences. At the behest of Roach and McNally, they held a party at the temple where everyone drank "nectar", a specially blessed drink that was allowed to be drunk despite vows of abstinence. According to some members of the group, who wished to remain anonymous, at one of these parties they saw how Roach and McNally allegedly worked miracles: they passed through the walls of the temple building in violation of the laws of space and time. Such stories became commonplace in their camp, and communal hysteria elevated Roach and McNally to godlike status.
Joel Kramer and Diana Olstead, co-authors of Masks of Authoritarianism: Essays on Guru, explained these supposed miracles on a psychological level. According to Kramer, "People may convince themselves that they have seen a lot of things, but they are actually projections of their own minds." Olstead adds that students give their psychic energy to the guru, and the guru reflects that energy back to them in return. It is likely that McNally learned to see the world through Roach's eyes. “Roach took over her mind, or she let him control her,” Olstead said. “That's what disciples do: they rely entirely on the teacher. She surrendered to him, being a young woman and an unformed person. And a similar process is probably reverse order occurred between Thorson and McNally. She was a lama and guru, and also his wife.”
When the retreat began, no one had any idea how their relationship would survive this pause. Then, after three months of silence, in March 2011, Thorson knocked on the door of one retreat participant who was a nurse practitioner. He was bleeding from three stab wounds. She was afraid to treat him and recommended that he go to the hospital. But he was examined by the second person to whom he turned, the retreat doctor. Reluctantly, he agreed to treat the wounds - deep cuts on the torso and shoulder. According to the doctor, the wounds were so deep that they "threatened the vital organs."
McNally and Thorson did not provide any explanation at the time as to how this happened. But rumors of domestic violence soon began to circulate, also in whispers, as did rumors of Roach's alleged sexual liaisons with various students. Most people kept a vow of silence, so it is not surprising that the event became known only after almost a year.
In February 2012, Lama Christie withdrew from her vow of silence to give a public lecture on her accomplishments during her meditation. In her signature white outfit and silk eyepatch, she sat on the throne and spoke of the spiritual experience she had in the process of forging relationships that became increasingly unstable and violent.
McNally also described that, apparently during the game, she stabbed Thorson three times with the knife they received as a wedding present. Because of this, he could have died, and only a few are given to understand what lesson can be learned from this. Can violence lead to higher spiritual goals? Has their teacher gone mad?
Speaking of her newfound ability as the goddess Kali, she asked listeners to learn from her experiences with violence. Although the original recording of her conversation was taken off the internet, she later explained the incident in open letter: "I just didn't understand that a knife could actually cut someone... I tried to evoke aggressive energy, such ferocity worthy of a goddess... It was all a divine game for me." She went on to describe the tantric lessons Kali had taught her through this experience and how she was trying to cope with episodes of violence in her relationship with Thorson.
Jigme Palmo, a nun who sits on the board of directors of Diamond Mountain, later noted that the board was worried about this emphasis on aggression, as it could push meditators down a dangerous path. An emergency meeting of the board of directors was immediately called, where they discussed various plans of action. “It was an impossible situation,” says Palmo. "We didn't know what was going on inside the retreat, nor would the board be ultimately entirely responsible if anything went wrong." They consulted a lawyer and urgently sent McNally a written request to explain to them her domestic violence situation and her increasingly eccentric decisions.
Suddenly learning that her teachings had provoked a rift in the community, McNally tried to maintain control over the meditating retreat participants by banning all correspondence with the outside world. She ordered a halt to all mail deliveries and told retreat participants to refrain from contact with their families.
The board members decided that they had no choice but to unilaterally remove McNally from the retreat teacher position and remove McNally and Thorson from the retreat. The council sent them a letter explaining their decision. McNally and Thorson were given an hour to pack and leave. At the same time, they were offered compensation for moving expenses, including expenses for a hotel, car rental, prepaid bills for Cell phones and another $3,600 in cash. The message was very clear: leave now. But McNally and Thorson had made a vow to stay in the hallowed grounds of Diamond Mountain, and they had other plans. Instead of leaving, McNally and Thorson intended to find a nearby cave where they could continue to meditate while maintaining contact with some of McNally's students.
Before they finally agreed to leave, McNally met privately with Michael Brennan to discuss the council's decision. McNally kept a vow of silence, and at the meeting they exchanged notes, so it turned out to be a good transcript of what she was thinking at the time. The document Brennan shared with me sheds light on McNally's state of mind. In it, she mentions the ordinances that took place and the pressure that participants, especially Thorson, felt while "locked" in the retreat.
But it all fit into the broader plans. "It's all right, you'll see," she began. She then added, "I inherited my holy lama [Roach's] style of pushing people beyond their limits." However, she accused her ex-husband in that he "added fuel to the fire" so that people would be afraid of her as a teacher. Maybe, real problem was the jealousy of her former lover for her current husband.
She then left in English without further communication with the board of directors, without saying anything to most of the retreat participants. She, Thorson and two assistants at full speed climbed the mountain slope. They discovered an ancient cave that was not visible from the valley where the retreat was taking place. There they stayed to finish three years of silent meditation out of sight of the rest of the retreat participants. Several people whom they let into their secret promised to supply them with supplies as needed. Water was going to be left in secluded places where it is easy to find, but at the same time go unnoticed.

The decision to live the rest of the retreat on a mountain in Arizona was objectively fatal from the moment it was made. Sergeant David Noland, who coordinated the rescue effort, has had to rescue 36 people in his district over the past three years who were dying from dehydration or exposure to the environment. He said that "in that area death is inevitable." The Diamond Mountain cabins were built with the environment in mind, but the hole in the rock where McNally and Thorson had laid out their sleeping bags wasn't a safe place to hide. For two months, the couple was alternately pestered by rain, then wind, then snow. Weakened in their high desert retreat on a steep mountainside, the couple could not even go down to collect the supplies that were left for them.

Illustration: Weakened in their high desert retreat on a steep mountainside, the couple could not even go down to collect the supplies that had been left for them.

Although their decision proved fatal, McNally and Thorson had no intention of committing suicide. They only thought that they had become exceptionally capable, and the rules for ordinary people no longer apply to them. They were at the height of their greatness. Enlightenment was not far off.
Three days before Thorson's death, McNally's supporters published a 31-page "Shift in the Matrix" manifesto: McNally wrote it to explain her spiritual experiences from the previous year. She writes: “One of the highest tantric vows is about how you should see your lama and how you should behave towards him or her. When you are with your spouse, your spouse will become your highest lama. So I was [Ian's] lama for many years, but lately he has become my lama too. Your lama is undoubtedly a deity, and your task at all times is to fight the desire to consider him or her less important in status. You must trust your lama with your life and give yourself completely to him.”
For them, that cave was a challenge, a challenge they had to overcome together, a sacred place in the tradition of the great Himalayan lamas, whose asceticism and deprivation was their way to achieve greatness.
McNally and Thorson were short of water and began to drink dirty sewage rainwater. On the morning of April 22, 2012, Thorson did not want to wake up, and McNally activated the emergency beacon she had taken with her. Thorson was barely breathing. They will wait another seven hours for a search and rescue team to fly in and pick them up off the mountain. An autopsy would eventually reveal that Thorson's cause of death was dehydration: his corpse weighed only 100 pounds. McNally did not want to part with him: all in tears, she dispersed the representatives of the police and funeral services with her fists when they wanted to take his corpse.
McNally recovered at a hospital in nearby Wilcox, Arizona. A few days later she disappeared. Rumors spread that she had taken part in another retreat, kept a vow of silence and spent time in meditation in order to spiritually realize what her husband's death meant. According to various reviews, she was in the Bahamas, then in South America, then in Colorado, then in Kathmandu or California, but no one knew exactly what she was doing and whether she was safe.

I saw Roach one more time during a one-night stop in Phoenix on my way back to California. I emailed him, but he didn't respond to my emails and avoided my requests to meet all the time I was in Arizona, and this was my only chance to talk to him in person. That evening, his lecture on the importance of mindfulness and mindfulness ran for three hours. And when he finished, I got in line for a near-retirement Indian woman with a Louis Vuitton handbag, who was chatting with other people in line and looking at a beaded necklace that she hoped Roach would bless. "I can't believe I'm about to meet an enlightened one," she said excitedly.
When it was my turn, I stood in front of his throne and introduced myself. I tried to frame the question of how he felt about Thorson's death. “It was a very sad event,” he replied. "But why aren't people interested in my teachings?" One person died in the desert, and suddenly everyone noticed it. People should be talking about all the good deeds I've done, not about this."
I was not satisfied with this answer. Roach seemed sorry to take a moment to reflect on the true depth of this event. Maybe it was just karma for him, and maybe the story didn't end when someone died in the desert. It's probably only just begun.

Scott Carney website: www.scottcarney.com
Article published March 2013
Article reprinted with permission from Scott Carney.
The permanent address of the article.

Michael Roach- Author of famous books "Diamond Cutter", "How Yoga Works" and others. An American who received the title of Geshe in the 70s (a Buddhist academic degree awarded in the monasteries of the Tibetan Gelug and Sakya schools, this title is comparable to a Western Ph.D. degree), took monasticism in the Tibetan Gelug school, but then abandoned monastic life, the founder of a large business for the sale of diamonds, its own retreat center and training system, its own approach to the presentation of Buddhist teachings.

The figure is bright and contradictory. Some consider him a spiritual teacher of the modern world, others - a businessman in the field of spiritual training, some accuse him of creating his own sect.

We offer an interview with this outstanding person.

Interview with Geshe Michael Roach.

"Diamond Business and Buddhist Monasticism"

Questions - Natalia Vasilyeva, Ilya Zhuravlev.

Interview and translation from English - Natalia Vasilyeva.

Tell us a little about yourself and how you got the degree of geshe, because at that time (1995) you were the first Western person to receive this title in the Sera Mei monastery of the Gelug school throughout the long history of the monastery.

To get the Geshe degree, I had to answer a lot of questions. One of the questions was about the pen. The examiner asked me what that thing was? And I said, "It's a pen." He continued and asked me: "What if I show this thing to the dog? What will the dog see? Will he also see the pen?" And I said: - "No, the dog will see the toy."

Who is right? Dog or human?

The answer is both.

But what if the dog and the person leave the room where the pen is? What kind of subject would it be then? Pen or toy?

It depends on who enters. If a person, it will be a pen, and if a dog, it will be a toy, and if both enter, then the object will be both.

The teacher began to ask more questions:

If the person returns to the room, the object becomes a pen. But where does this perception come from? Does it come from the nature of the human mind or from the nature of the pen?

After the person enters, the object becomes a pen, because the person sees the object, and this image will come from his mind.

Then we said, well, let's check with our eyes closed and try to change the handle, say to a diamond or something else. We can try, but it won't work because knowledge comes from the mind and we can't change anything just on the basis of desire.

The next question was: "How does an object arise in the mind"?

You watch an object and it arises in your mind and it is like a seed. After opening this seed, a pen comes out of it. The mind illustrates the image, and as a result of focusing attention on the object, you get the perception of the pen. The dog has a different seed that will open as a toy in his mind.

Is the desire of a person to see something concrete and the “seed” you are talking about one and the same thing or are they different concepts?

No, it is not appropriate to use the word "I want" here, because, for example, people suffer from various things and, as a rule, they do not want this. A person cannot cure cancer only on the basis of desire or positive thinking. Sometimes people find themselves in a car accident, for example, but in reality, no one wants to get hurt or die. The seed makes you see something, but that seed can be changed.

Where do these seeds come from? What is their nature?

That's a good question... After passing the exam, my teacher told me to go to New York. And I asked him: "Why?". He said that I should try to carry out the experiment. New York is like a huge laboratory, and I have to make a million dollars to invest in a new book preservation project.

So, with regard to the seed - I will give an example. If I wanted a pen in the future, I must plant the "pen seed" in my mind. The mind is like a garden. Take a flower for example, if I want these blue flowers to bloom in August, then I have to plant them in May, and they will grow for several months.

The situation is the same with the mind. You need another person to plant a seed in your mind, you cannot plant it yourself. You need another karma. It must go from one person to another and back, like a psycho-echo.

For example, if I ask you "Do you want a pen?" and you say "Yes". Then I put the pen on my palm and at the moment when I release it - you see the image of the pen and its image will go through your eyes - "mind windows". This image is imprinted in the mind - this is the sowing of the "seed of the pen" in the mind. This image will become a seed in the mind after one to two weeks. The seed opens very quickly. Later, when you see the same person and open his hand, you will see a pen. But it's not a pen, it's just an image of a pen coming from your mind. One can know the seed of the pen through meditation.

So this was an experiment with me when my teacher told me that I should go to New York and make one million dollars for a project to save Buddhist manuscripts. Since we bought computers and paid rent and so on.

In this video, you can briefly view information about our Tibetan Manuscript Preservation Project. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMQTQGwQfu4. The video was made with the help of a major American television company about 20 years ago.

In fact, we have made a catalog of manuscripts from the monastery of Sera Mey. And this catalog consists of 143,000 titles of texts alone and it took about 20 years to complete this work.

By the way, we also worked with Buddhist scholars from St. Petersburg to preserve Buddhist texts. There are about 140,000 Buddhist texts in St. Petersburg.

And the desires themselves to create electronic library, save important Buddhist texts, or find a resource to carry out these projects - these are all thoughts and desires in our minds. But why these desires and not others?

Okay, let's take the desire to write a book as an example. This desire is also a seed, from my past. We cannot see the past. I don't know what I did before I was born. But I can look at my desires and I can tell that in my last life I did worse. I cannot see the past life, but I can see the result, I see my desire, its source. And you can also guess about your past lives.

The way we did our experiment in New York started with three people. We started the diamond business. And it has grown to 10,000 employees bringing in 250 million a year. Later, we sold it to Warren Buffett 5 years ago

Many people have asked me, "How did you do that?" We made it our team. Now we have 33 teachers and usually about 10 teachers from different countries come with me to give a master class. I have taught in different countries and next year we are planning to visit maybe Beijing.

You have experience of living in different countries and different cultures. So, for example, you lived among the monks in a Buddhist monastery, and for a long time you were in the sphere of big business in New York. Is there a similarity between monastic life and social life in society, or are these two completely different ways life and way of thinking?

We were recently in Tokyo, before this Singapore, Buenos Aires, before this Colombia, so we were in many, many countries. And there I taught how to make money. And what's interesting is that at the very beginning I thought that people just want money. I thought they were only greedy and wanted to become rich. That they are not very spiritual. And then I began to communicate personally with people. And every year I talk to about 10,000 people. Now I believe that many people around the world actually want to help others. They want money to help the refugees so they can do something useful. I think that's why movies like Spiderman or Iron Man are so popular in America and hundreds of other superheroes around the world.

In Buddhism we say that all people are here because they want two things. They want food and they want sex. But deeper motivation - most of them are here to help other people, and that's a good thing. Everyone has a desire to take care of people. Everyone wants to be a mother and take care sometimes, even kids. If you give money to help, you help other people. For example Bill Gates and Warren Buffett reached $40-50 billion in property and after that they started giving money.

As for life in a Tibetan monastery, the schedule of life there is very peculiar. So, getting up there along with the sun at 4:30 am. Then we all went to meditate together. We were maybe a little over a thousand monks, and this joint meditation is very strong. And then we sang sutras, like the Heart Sutra, 21 times. (quotes in a singsong line from the sutra)

The Heart Sutra or the Perfect Wisdom Heart Sutra is one of the most famous primary sources of Mahayana Buddhism. The Sanskrit name of this sutra is Arya Bhagavati Prajnya Paramita Hirdaya (Prajñāpāramita-hṛdayam sūtra). In Tibetan - Pakpa Chomden Dema Sherabkyi Parultu Chinpay Nyingpo. Here www.fodian.net/English/HeartSutra.pdf - you can get acquainted with the translation of this sutra from Tibetan to English language by Michael Roach)

We sang it for 3-4 hours a day. It talks about things like a pen, about planting and germinating a seed - and it's very beautiful. Buddhists try to translate their teaching into a mantra and make a song out of it. They sing about what they see, what they feel, what they hear, what smells they smell, what they think. Everything comes from the seed and the seed comes from caring for other people and helping other people.

If I want to plant a seed, I need someone else. I can't do it myself. I have to take care of someone else. And if I want to see the pen, then I must give the seed of the pen. And it works the same way with money.

Sometimes people go to live and serve in a monastery in order to find peace, and sometimes they run away from society and from reality. Have you seen happy people in the monastery? Are they happy and satisfied with their lifestyle?

There is a so-called outer monastery and a small monastery, or in Tibet we say "secret monastery". There were about 3,000 people in the outer monastery and it's like a city. As in any small town, it has its own politics, there are "big" people and there are "small" people: such as cooks, teachers, and builders. The device is the same as in ordinary society. The inhabitants of the outer monastery have the most common problems, as everywhere people are not satisfied and complain that they do not have enough money, etc.

Just like in a real city, people are busy, working, and at the same time putting in a lot of effort and stress to become a geshe. There were 60 other monks in my class and the guys tried to survive and pass the exam, but most failed it. There's too much pressure.

But in a closed monastery, we call it a "secret monastery", the cook could be a real yogi at the same time. The guy at the construction site could also be a yogi. A monk cultivating the land could also well be a yogi. And so on... it can be the most inconspicuous people, and at the same time you can meet an unusual and wonderful person, for example in the kitchen. You see that this is not a great lama. Everything is like in politics. And under the guise simple monks, You can meet great people, hear their secret meditation, somewhere behind the wall, which can last all night.

For example, there was one guy - the secretary of the monastery. He was typing all day, and he was the only Tibetan in the monastery who knew English out of all 3,000 people (at that time)... He wrote all the letters for the monastery. And then one day a woman from Canada arrived, and she began to say that she really wants to know her future. And I told my teacher that she wants to know her future. And he answered - well, we will ask the oracle. He advised this woman that she should go to a specially designated room, take a bath and get ready. He also told her to be careful not to get too close to the oracle. And they asked me to translate - otherwise I would not have got there. After preparations, we went to a special room with a large throne. One of the monks of the monastery sat on the throne. He was dressed like Genghis Khan, like a warrior. He had a large crown on his head, and behind him stood two more monks. Looking closer, I recognized him as the secretary of the monastery. Before that, I had no idea that he was an oracle, as during the day he was very quiet.

They said, "OK, you can ask a question right now." And she asked: "What should I do in life? What is my spiritual path? What is my purpose?" And the oracle began to hiss and roar and jump, and the two boys could hardly hold him when he swung and drew his sword from its scabbard. He tried to pounce and kill her ... and the assistants had to grab and hold him, while he was in a trance, she then asked again, "What should I do? What is my spiritual purpose?"

Then his voice changed. We call it "habbab" when the Deva (Deity) enters inside a person and tells about the future. And then the oracle says, in a hoarse hissing voice: "You need to find a good teacher. You must learn from a real teacher."

You know... that's the kind of advice anyone could give her. All three thousand monks could give her the same advice. But here, she was very frightened and believed! Because it was very scary... and in fact, 25 people have already given her the same advice before. And she said, "Okay, okay, I'll do it!".

And this monk has been an oracle for many lifetimes. In addition, my teacher also asked him a lot of questions. Thus, the spirituality of the people in the monastery is not obvious and not visible at first sight. And outside the monastery, they look very ordinary.

Who can you name as your main teachers? And what are the most important things they taught you?

I had famous and secret teachers. Both of them are very important to me. So, when I was 21 or 22, I met the Dalai Lama. At that time it was free to come to his house and talk to him. Because no one really knew him then. At that time, I turned to him and asked: "I want to stay with you." And he said, "You have to take care of your mother" (my mother was very sick at the time). So he sent me back to the United States to take care of my mother until her death.

And then I heard that there is a lama near Princeton, New Jersey. This is a very strange town. big amount Kalmyks (Mongols). By the way, Buddhism has existed in Kalmykia for at least the last 700 years. The Dalai Lama said: “I sent a good lama there to become a lama Mongolian people there".

My teacher was Khen Rinpoche. The Dalai Lama said that I should go to Khen Rinpoche and ask to be a student. And I went there to meet my Master. He was very great. For example, he was a debate leader in Tibet, among 10,000 other monks. He was really great.

I met him in 1975 and lived with him for 25 years. We were like father and son. I lived in his house, cooked his food and washed his clothes. And he taught me 4-5 hours a day for 25 years. He was not only a great lama, but also a great man. He was also very hardworking and persistent. He forced me to study and often left me without rest, he did not leave me alone for a minute while he was teaching me. He died in 2004 at the age of 83.

In a Tibetan monastery, I studied with 12 Tibetan lamas as teachers. Some of them are still alive, some are no longer. For example, the one who examined me and held the debate is still alive.

And my teacher, Lama Khen Rinpoche, was reborn. Now he lives in a new reincarnation. In September 2014, he was appointed head of the monastery.

Well, secret teachers are different. When I was 17, I met a very special woman in the garden...she is like an angel to me. This special garden near the temple is still there, where I first met her. She taught me all my whole life. She taught me the philosophy of life, and many different incredible things, very strange things. I still love her and still learn from her and with her. Even today, we bought a gift for her in the same store. Since you always need to take care of your teachers. She is my lifelong spiritual teacher, not a Buddhist teacher.

This woman, Christy McNally, with whom you had a partnership?

No, it's completely different laughs). Yes, I tried to do it. In Buddhism, there is such a custom that you can have a spiritual partner if the lama allows you to do so. I have this partnership lasted 12 years. During the partnership, you cannot be separated and are more than a few steps apart and this is very strict. You must do everything together. We spent 12 years together without breaking our obligations. I ended this practice about 5 years ago. This is a special practice, and it is a very complex and difficult practice.

In the West, you are sometimes criticized for having partnered with a woman as a Gelug monk. In the older schools of Tibetan Buddhism (Nyingma, Kagyu), as well as in the tradition of Ngakpa yogis, it is possible to be married to a lama, but this path is denied in the Gelug school. Why do you think in XVI century, Je Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug school, canceled the opportunity for his students to have partnerships?

Yes, this is of course a misconception. One of the most famous yogis of India was Naropa, and he also had a wife. Her name was Niguma. Recently, we just held a seminar - "Lady Niguma's Yoga". And her partner was the best monk in India. He was head of the Buddhist monastery of Nalanda in ancient Magadhi (modern Bihar), India. It was the most famous monastery in the last 2000 years in India. But it was still necessary to obtain permission from the lama in order to have a partnership. In Tibet since the time of the Dalai Lama, one must first become a Geshe, and then one can start studying at a secret college. There are two secret colleges. And my teacher was a lama and vice president of one of them.

I also got my partnership permission from the Dalai Lama's teacher, but not from the Dalai Lama himself. Since the Dalai Lama does not know me well, I only met him 3 times. In Tibet, you must obtain permission from your immediate teacher. Because the student and the teacher have lived together for 25 years, and only the teacher knows if you are ready or not. Many people think that such a custom does not exist. But this is a very old custom that existed a thousand years ago. And this is a very difficult practice.

People who talk like that about Tsongkhapa are not knowledgeable, they have not studied in a monastery and are not well educated. After reading only a few books in English, possible mistakes or with fundamentally wrong judgments. There is a famous book about the life of Tsongkhapa, about his biography. I translated it from Tibetan into English. And his biography is given in my book The Dharma King: An Illustrated Biography of Je Tsongkhapa, Master of the First Dalai Lama. ("King of the Dharma: The Illustrated Life Of Je Tsongkapa, Teacher Of The First Dalai Lama").

This book is about the life of Je Tsongkhapa. And it took me about 15 years to translate this book. The illustrations in the book are paintings that the Dalai Lama's family moved when he had to flee Tibet. They took these paintings with them, and later they ended up in the regions where I lived. And I have translated this book. It has a story about partnership, which is described quite clearly. And everyone who wishes can now read this book in English.

It is a beautiful story in which Je Tsongkhapa meets the Buddha, he gets the right to meet the Buddha. Then he met Buddha Manjushri, this is a special Buddha - the embodiment of wisdom. All his life he studied with this Buddha. There you can also read how he met the first Dalai Lama. And the first Dalai Lama studied with him all his life. Then Tsongkhapa had a vision in which the Buddha told him, "You need to have a partner." And he said, "I don't understand..."

There is masculine energy and feminine energy in a person, if you want to become a Buddha in this life, you need to have a partner. There is no other way.

Then Tsongkhapa said, "I'm not sure if this is really the right way," and asked his family the same thing. Then he spoke to Manjushri and asked him to explain in the same way. And Manjushri said the same. And then he had a partner - "a lady with a red head."

Picture - book endpaper and Naropa + Niguma, Tsongkhapa + lady in red

Are there any tantric practices in your teaching, and in particular tantric sexual practices? Do you consider them important for spiritual life?

Yoga is important. My right side of my body is masculine with masculine energy, but I also have feminine energy in me. When you do yoga with a partner, or when you meditate together, it's very powerful.

In addition, let's think about whether they drink wine in the church? Yes, but it's ritual wine. And it claims to be the blood of Jesus. And it will be blasphemous if we say that people just drink in church. You can not say that.

As for tantric practices, they are very beautiful practices, and they can be compared with how we say that we drink the blood of Christ and eat his flesh. And to say that people pawn behind the collar in the church is, of course, stupid, and is not true.

This is very, very important. And to call these practices sex is, of course, not true. It's like saying that the priest organizes a drinking party. No. These practices are done not only for one's own pleasure, but also as a spiritual ritual. This is difficult to explain to the general public, because people are very dependent on their desires, on sex. And, as a rule, it is difficult for a person with a strong sexual desire to understand the essence of spiritual practice, and this is sad.

In the workshops you give people some tantric practices and some Naropa yoga practices. Previously, this knowledge was very secret and was given only after 3 years or even after 25 years of study. How long do people have to study with you to get this knowledge?

In our seminars we teach yoga, we do not teach other practices. Some of my students took a tantric course and it took 14 years. In my School they have to study for 14 years. After, they practiced for another 3 years. The total is 17 years.

I do not teach secret practices openly and it is impossible to find anything about it on the Internet. In our open workshops, we only teach yoga poses, only exercises.

In seminars, we explain to people how to open the chakras. How to love each other more, help other people, improve their lives is good, and besides, they are already doing yoga, doing asanas.

I translated 10,000 pages, which took me 20 years. And I brought them to New York. In addition, I spent 7 years preparing for the geshe exam. After that, I was engaged in translations at the Diamond University - this is 7 years. Every day I did my homework of translating another 10,000 pages. It's 20,000 pages and 10,000 of them are secret. You cannot find them anywhere. No one can see them without at least 7 years of practice. But now sometimes Tibetan lamas come, they take $100 each and give knowledge in one day. And it makes me very upset.

You need to study for 14 years (2 periods of 7 years) to understand the meaning. You cannot learn everything in one day.

Does this knowledge have to be explained by a master or can a person read Buddhist texts and understand the meaning?

One must learn from the master. You cannot do this over the Internet. So you can even harm yourself if the uninitiated person has not studied with the master. Because this knowledge is secret.

I knew a guy in New York, we've known each other for 35 years. He tried to learn on his own from books and hurt himself. He damaged his prana and became physically ill. He tried to do it without Master. This is very strict.

In my School, everything is very correct, and you need to work hard. All this was also discussed in the book "King of Dharma". I didn't add a single word of my own there - it's all a translation.

But if we touch on the question of the soul: in Buddhism they use the concept of anatmavada (anātmavāda), or the absence of the soul. And in Hinduism there is the concept of the soul, Purusha or Atman. How do you combine these concepts in teaching?

This is much more of a misunderstanding. People generally cannot read Sanskrit and they do not understand the original sources. Usually, Western people have heard something, but they have not read anything in Sanskrit. Even B.K.S. Iyengar, who wrote commentaries on the Yoga Sutras and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, although very famous in yoga, they did not read Sanskrit (this is not true, at least in relation to Pattabhi Jois - he was a Sanskrit professor by training and taught it in Mysore - editorial note of Wild Yogi).

I studied Sanskrit for 14 years and independently translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and many other texts.

In order to explain the meaning of "anatman" or the absence of the soul, I will give an example. Does the person see the pen? - Yes. Does the dog see the toy? - too, yes. And then we put the pen on the table, and leave it in an empty room, in which there is neither a person nor a dog. What is on the table? - There is nothing there. And this is the only meaning of "anatman".

Many do not understand and have no idea about it. You have to study to understand. I translated 20,000 pages in 14 years to figure it out.

So, if you leave the pen, but take the person and the dog out of the room, then the object in the form of a pen or a toy does not yet exist. This does not mean that the object does not exist physically. This means that he has not yet been identified.

And that also means we have to share, we have to help the poor, we have to help the refugees. We have to help because the individual does not exist.

The Yoga Sutras are very beautifully and correctly written. Previously, Buddhists and Indian yogis practiced together, we do it together. Hata Yoga Pradipika is the oldest Indian text describing asanas. And also the parampara should be considered. Parampara means direct connection between teacher and student. And in the parampara, not only the direct guru matters and is honored, but also the previous three generations of gurus. And in this chain there are both representatives of Hinduism and Buddhism.

But people don't usually know about it, they read a couple of books and didn't read the original sources, and they have a misunderstanding. They never listened to a good teacher. After I translated the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, I brought these texts to New York and taught there for 10 years. And over 300 yoga instructors have attended these workshops.

Who did you learn Sanskrit from?

I started studying Sanskrit in 1975 at Princeton with my teacher. Later I studied in Varanasi.

You mentioned that you had a very strong desire to help the Tibetan refugees and preserve the Buddhist texts to aid the teachings, as well as to organize a school for Westerners under the Geshe program. And you made it happen. But why now you have chosen such a way to share knowledge as conducting business trainings?

At our university in Princeton, I only teach from Buddhist texts. Now we have a 12-year course program, and we are in the fourth year of study. And I teach the old way - we study all day. This training is free. I wear monastic clothes and we all get together. Teaching takes place in Sanskrit and Tibetan and only 70 people attend this course.

At the same time, we have just returned from Singapore, where 4,000 people gathered for our business seminar. And if I want to help people, I must have both.

If I teach only 70 people in my lifetime, it won't change the world. Last year, about 10,000 people came to my business seminars. And I'm not used to saying that I'm just a businessman or just a yoga teacher or just a Buddhist teacher - I want to have all these qualities.

Buddha says, "If you want to help people, you must give them what is acceptable to them."

I also play rock & roll with my friends. And when young people come, they feel their involvement and we all play together. I need to be funny and I need to touch people's nerves.

Now we have teachers and branches in the USA, Israel, Vietnam, Mexico, Bulgaria, Russia and other places. We have 50 groups that are learning at the same time. In Mexico, for example, about 1000 people came to the seminar. I love watching the teachers from my school teach, I am happy when I see how they travel around the world and teach in other countries. We have many students in Russia and Ukraine. I like New York and Paris, Singapore and Argentina. We have thousands of students in China. Teachers from my University teach many people in different countries of the world and in many companies, they have helped many people. We have experience teaching in very large companies with 32,000 employees, which is great.

If I do my thing in the Buddhist way, only 70 people will come, even if I can make this program free. We have people who teach meditation, yoga and business ethics.

We are trying to change the ethical consciousness in people. Imagine if 100 business people started acting more ethically. You can make more money if you are more ethical. We are not trying to make people more ethical. We say that they can make more money if they act more ethically.

Sometimes in the press there are rather sharp articles where you are called the founder of a sect or your own cult. And your teaching is compared with other teachers from Tibet, whose classes are much cheaper than in your courses. What is your position on this matter?

I taught for free for 25 years. And all this time I was just investing money to educate other people. And if now a person wants to study at our University in Bowie, Arizona, USA - it's also free. I teach everyone who comes to me. And in fact, the final income even now is zero. As for my teaching, I just keep helping people. And newspapers that are not familiar with me or my activities may say something rude and incorrect. And I really don't want to waste time proving to someone I don't know that he's wrong. I have something to do - I translate books and teach people who come to me. We also have many projects to help prisoners, the poor and refugees. Today, we are the world's largest organization to help Tibetan refugees and have the longest history of over 27 years. I use my time for useful things, for helping people. I can't stop the bad things that newspapers do, but I can do more good things and focus on that.

In open sources, you can find information about a very strange story - that during one of the retreats in your center in Arizona, a murder occurred. What really happened there?

I organized a long retreat for three years. And among the participants was one strange couple. The woman was aggressive towards her husband, they cursed a lot, once she even attacked him with a knife. I called the police and asked the couple to leave the retreat. And they left. But they secretly went to a secluded cave and meditated there. And the man died in this cave, not in the retreat center. I think everything is fine with the woman now, but I have not seen her since that time.

But in fact, you have to understand - sometimes this can happen. Because I have 20,000 students and some of them may be mentally ill. I don't check people with a psychiatrist when they come to study with me. I try to help them if possible.

You have had a lot of rather serious strict and long Buddhist practices in your life, good teachers, you have a huge Buddhist University and the Tibetan Refugee Fund. If we focus on the topic of karma and reincarnation, what do you want to realize in this life, would you like to be reborn in a new one, and if so, for what actions?

This life and the next life are the same process. Why do I see an oracle, for example, and not a dog? I create 65 seeds with a glance every second. Then each of those 65 seeds open in my mind. For example, now the seeds from last week are ripe and open, and later the seeds that I create now will be opened. For example, I see breakfast because I have a mature breakfast seed and my eye was on breakfast earlier. But there are also seeds in the mind that I created this morning, for example, and they are all doubling. Like a 100% increase in profits. If today I give a pen, tomorrow I will have two - this is how I made my money. Someday this body will die, but I have millions more seeds that have not opened yet. And nothing can destroy them, nothing can destroy them. So if a person's body dies, its seeds remain here. And they must open, and therefore you must be reborn again in order to open them. You must - there is no other way.

In this life, I want to see many teachers in every country - this is my dream. I want people to teach other people how to find peace.

Biography of Michael Roach

(provided by students)

Michael Roach grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He was awarded the National Merit Scholarship. He entered Princeton University and in 1975 was admitted as a novice to Rashi Gempil Ling, a small monastery based in the American-Mongolian congregation in Howell, New Jersey, USA. He began his 25-year study under Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, one of the greatest Buddhist scholars of the 20th century, who in 1991 was appointed Abbot of the Tibetan Sera Mei Monastery.

In 1983, Geshe Michael became the first foreigner ever accepted to study at Sera Mei; he was enrolled in Gyalrong College and ordained as a Buddhist monk. He began intensive training under ten different masters of the monastery. Including more than ten years received private lessons from Geshe Thupten Rinchen, who is one of the greatest connoisseurs of the texts of Tibet. With great difficulty, Geshe Michael mastered the Tibetan art of "rapid fire" of Buddhist monastic discussion, and had the honor of taking part in the four Jang Gunchu winter debates. (Jang Gunchu Winter Debates) in inter-monastic competitions similar to the monastic Olympics.

In 1995, after a grueling three-week open examination among hundreds of monks, he was awarded the degree of Geshe. His study of Sanskrit was also completed by this time, under the careful guidance of Dr. Samuel D. Atkins, a renowned linguist, Greek and Vedic Sanskrit scholar, who was also head of the classics department at Princeton.

In 1981, Geshe Michael helped found the Andin International Diamond Corporation of New York. Anding began with a $50,000 loan and only two or three employees. By the time he left the company in 1999, Geshe Michael was the vice president of the gemstones division and had grown to over $100 million in annual sales. He was one of the first to explore laboratory-grown artificial diamonds and advocated their use in jewelry to prevent the environmental destruction and political violence that would result from natural diamond mining.

In 1975 Geshe Michael also started one of his ministries, he collected donations and clothes in the Princeton area and made charitable contributions for Tibetan refugees, arranging the delivery of donations to their camps. In 1978 he assisted his teacher Khen Rinpoche with the formalities of creating charitable foundation to support the refugee monks. Thanks in part to the income generated by the Andean International Diamond Corporation, the Sera Mei food bank was able to expand, which had been maintained for many years, providing food and clothing for thousands of monks. Over the past 25 years, working with Western charitable organizations such as the United Church - Council of World Ministries, New York, the foundation has assisted in the construction of numerous buildings and dormitories; opening elementary school and providing textbooks, salaries of teachers and students with scholarships; conducting water supply and irrigation systems; organization of vocational and agricultural training; the opening of the hospital; fully equipped computer center; libraries for refugee monks from the Tibetan monastery of Sera Mei.

In 1993, Geshe Michael decided to open up the entire Geshe program in a language that was accessible to Europeans. He divided the Geshe program into 18 courses and gave them the first transmission in New York during six years of teaching from 1993-1999 without any student contributions.

Geshe Michael played rock and roll with his brothers in his youth and was able to pay for his first trip to India by playing Arabic fusion jazz with the band Tarbouche in Princeton. In the late 70s he studied sitar and classical Indian music with Mubarak Masih in Missoura and Desha Bandhu Sharma in Himchal Pradesh in the foothills of the Himalayas. He subsequently performed concerts in both India and the United States. In recent years he has also performed with Krishna Das and positive rapper MC Yogi.

Books written by Geshe Michael Roach: The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Business and Personal Life (this book has been translated into 20 languages), The Garden, How Yoga Works, The Oriental Path to Bliss, The Tibetan Book yoga", "Karma of love".

Geshe Michael has given numerous lectures on Buddhism and business trainings on successful business, traveled to many countries of the world over the past 32 years and in recent years speaks to more than 10,000 people a year, explaining how service to others is the right path to success. In 2009, he joined with leading alumni of the Asian Classics Institute and the Diamond Mountain Retreat Center to form the Diamond Cutter Institute to deliver similar workshops to an even larger audience around the world.

Can a Buddhist monk do business? Can he do business successfully? Is there really a contradiction between spiritual practice and material enrichment? The practical answer to these questions is the life story of the author of this book, Geshe Michael Roach. Twenty years of persistent comprehension of Buddhism led him to acquire the academic title of Geshe - Master of Buddhist Sciences. Seventeen years in the diamond business allowed him to turn a small firm with an initial capital of fifty thousand dollars into a multinational company with a turnover of over one hundred million dollars. The author of "The Diamond Cutter" believes that the goal of business and ancient Tibetan wisdom, as well as all human aspirations, is one: to become rich, to achieve both external and internal prosperity.

Foreword Buddha and Business

For seventeen years, from 1981 to 1998, I had the honor of working with Ofer and Aya Azrielant, owners of Andin International Diamond Corporation. They were the heart of the team that built one of the world's largest diamond and jewelry companies. Their business started with a $50,000 loan and a staff of three or four employees, including myself. By the time I left the company to devote myself to teaching at the New York Institute, which I founded, the corporation had over $100 million in annual sales and over 500 employees in offices around the world.

Throughout my time in the diamond business, I had to lead a double life. Seven years before entering the world of diamonds, I graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, and even earlier received the Presidential Scholarship Medal from the President of the United States and the McConnell Scholarship from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs.

This grant allowed me to go to Asia and study there with Tibetan lamas at the residence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Thus began my immersion in the ancient wisdom of Tibet, which ended only in 1995, when I - the first American who went through a twenty-year cycle of rigorous study and rigorous examinations - received the classical degree of Geshe - Master of Buddhist Sciences.

After graduating from Princeton, I lived in Buddhist monasteries in both Asia and the United States, and in 1983 took the vows of a Buddhist monk.

But as soon as I put both feet on the monk's path, the chief teacher named Khen Rimpoche (or "Precious Abbot") urged me to change my cassock to a business suit and go into business. He explained his position by the fact that although the monastery was an ideal place to study the great ideas of Buddhist wisdom, knowledge acquires true value only in practice, and the bustle of American offices was the best fit for this.

For a while I resisted. I did not want to leave our quiet and peaceful monastery. In addition, the American businessman seemed to me greedy, ruthless, greedy and indifferent, that is, the complete opposite of what I aspired to. But one day, after overhearing a conversation between my teacher and several university students, I decided that I would follow his instructions and look for a job in business.

A few years earlier, during one of the daily meditations in the monastery, I had a vision, after which I felt that I wanted to work with diamonds. I knew absolutely nothing about these precious stones and did not even show much interest in jewelry. Moreover, none of the members of my family have ever dealt with this business. And so, in a simple way, with the naivete of a child, I began to go from one jewelry store to another, asking if anyone would like to take me as an apprentice.

Here it is worth mentioning that trying to get into the diamond business in this way is like trying to get a job in the mafia. The rough diamond trade is a closed business run by a very narrow circle, traditionally limited to members of one family. In those years, the Belgians controlled the trade in large diamonds - carats and above, the Israelis were engaged in the cutting of most of the small stones, and the Hasidic Jews of New York's 47th Street Diamond District controlled most of the wholesale trading transactions inside America.

Such closeness is explained by the fact that all the products of all the largest jewelry houses can fit in several small containers that look very much like ordinary shoe boxes. Moreover, it is simply impossible to detect the theft of diamonds worth millions of dollars: just put a handful or two in your pocket and go out the door. After all, nothing similar to a metal detector for detecting precious stones has yet been invented. Therefore, most business owners only work with those they can fully trust - sons, nephews or brothers. And they will never hire a simple Irish guy who wants to "play" with pebbles.

I remember that I went around about fifteen different stores offering my services. At that time, I was ready to work in the lowest position, but without much deliberation, I was refused all fifteen. However, an old watchmaker who lives in a nearby town advised me to take a diamond sorting course at the American Institute of Gemology (AIG) in New York. He said that I would be more likely to find a job if I had a degree, and perhaps in class I would meet someone who would help me with this.

And so it happened. At the institute, I met Mr. Ofer Azrielant. He took courses in sorting diamonds top quality, known as "investment" or "certified" stones.

To distinguish very expensive certified diamonds from counterfeit or simply cheap ones, it was necessary to learn how to identify narrow grooves, pinholes and other defects no larger than the tip of a needle on their surface. The main difficulty was that such flaws are easily confused with dust particles, hundreds of which settle on the surface of a diamond or on a microscope lens. This is how we learned together how to separate the "wheat from the chaff" and how not to lose the last shirt in this difficult matter.

I was pleasantly surprised by Ofer's inquisitiveness. He constantly asked questions to our teacher, carefully studied the concepts offered to us and did not take anything for granted, testing each idea several times. I firmly decided to ask him to help me find a job or hire him. For this purpose, I made acquaintance with him. A few weeks later, on the day I passed my final triage exam at the New York GIA Lab, I came up with some ridiculous pretext and went to my friend's office and asked for a spot.

I was very lucky: at that time he was just opening the American branch of an Israeli company founded by him. I went to him and begged him to teach me the diamond business: “I will do whatever you want, I will do any job, just give me a chance. I'll clean the office, wash the windows, I'll do whatever you tell me to."

To which he replied: “I don’t have the money to hire you, but I will put in a good word for you with the owner of this office, his name is Alex Rosenthal, and maybe he and I will pay you together out of our own pocket. But you will need to fulfill all the instructions and requests coming from both of us.

So I, a Princeton graduate, became a seven-dollar an hour errand boy, riding on my own two feet through the New York summer smog and winter blizzards to the outskirts of the diamond district, carrying worn canvas bags stuffed with gold and diamonds destined for selection. and ring inserts. Ofer, his wife Aya, myself, and our quiet but brilliant Yemeni jeweler named Alex Gal sat around the only rented table, sorting diamonds according to their quality, marking them for cutting, and calling potential buyers.

The salary was meager, and even that was often delayed. But, nevertheless, I managed to save up for a business suit, which I wore for months, day in and day out. We often stayed up past midnight, so I had to make the long journey back to my tiny cell in the small monastery of the Asian Buddhist community in Howell, New Jersey. There were only a few hours left for sleep. After that, I got up again and rode the bus to Manhattan.

After our business grew a bit and things got a bit better, we moved from the outskirts to one of the big jewelry districts. We took the bold step of hiring a master jeweler who alone occupied a large room, the so-called "factory". There he created our first diamond rings.

Soon they began to trust me so much that they allowed me to sit in front of a pile of diamonds and sort them by quality. So my old wish came true. Ofer and Aya asked me to lead the newly formed diamond buying division (at the time it consisted of me and another employee). I was delighted with this opportunity and plunged headlong into the work.

One of the conditions set Tibetan lama regarding my future work in the office, there was a need to hide the fact that I was a Buddhist. I had to wear my normal hair instead of shaving my head and dressing in normal clothes. Whatever Buddhist principles I used in my work, they had to be applied quietly and covertly, without any loud statements. I had to be a Buddhist sage inside while remaining an ordinary American businessman on the outside. So, secretly relying on Buddhist principles, I began to lead the department. After some time, I achieved a complete understanding with the Azrielants. And my responsible attitude to managing the affairs of our diamond department brought constant profit. A little later, I got full authority to hire and fire my subordinates, I got the opportunity to assign them salaries and promotions, determine the amount of working time and decide who will be responsible for what. All that was required of me was to produce products on time and make a good profit.

This book tells how I built the Diamond Department of Anding International using the principles of ancient Buddhist wisdom. About how I created a worldwide company from nothing, the turnover of which is millions of dollars a year. I did not achieve this alone, and not only did my views guide the firm's policies, but I can say that most of the strategic decisions and actions taken during my tenure as vice president were largely driven by the principles outlined in this book.

What is the main meaning of these principles? How many?

There are only three of them.

The first principle is that a business must be successful: it must make money. It is generally accepted in America and other Western countries that believers who lead a spiritual life cannot become successful in business and make a lot of money. It's just not for them. In Buddhism, however, it is believed that money is not evil. In fact, a person who has a huge amount of money resources can do much more good than someone who does not have these resources. The question is how we make money. We are aware of where they come from, but we need to understand what needs to be done to ensure that they continue to come to us, and how we maintain a healthy attitude towards money.

And then the main idea is the honesty of the way you earn money. It is necessary to clearly understand the source of their receipt and do everything so that this source does not dry out. At the same time, it is necessary to maintain a healthy attitude towards everything related to money. For as long as we stick to these ideas, making money will be compatible with spiritual development.

The second principle is that we should enjoy money, that is, learn to keep our minds and bodies in good health in the process of earning money. The activity of creating wealth should not greatly deplete a person either morally or physically, otherwise he simply will not have the strength to enjoy his acquisition. An entrepreneur who destroys his health by doing business destroys the very purpose of business.

The third principle is that at the very end of your journey, looking back, you would be able to honestly tell yourself that all these years in business were not without meaning, and all this was not done in vain. One day, all the business ventures in which we take part come to an end, and our life is not endless. That's why at the very end, at the very milestone business, looking back at all that has been achieved, it is necessary to see that we managed our lives and our business in such a way that it all acquired a certain final value, and our activities left a good mark in this world.

Summing up, it should be noted that the goal of business coincides with the goal of ancient Tibetan wisdom, which, like any human desire, is aimed at becoming rich - achieving external and internal prosperity. We can enjoy this prosperity only if we maintain a high degree of physical and mental health. And throughout our lives, we must find ways to fill that prosperity with meaning in the broadest sense of the word.

The success story of Andean International's diamond division is a lesson that anyone can learn and apply, regardless of background or creed.

Chapter 1 Where Wisdom Comes From

In the ancient language of India, this teaching is called Arya Vajra Chedaka Nama Prajnya Paramita Mahayana Sutra.

In the language of Tibet - "Pakpa Sherab Kyi Paroltu Chinpa Dorje Chupa Shejawa Tekpa Chenpoy Do".

It is translated into Russian as "Diamond Wisdom", a book on the path of compassion, a textbook of perfect wisdom.

What exactly makes this business textbook unlike any other you've ever read? His source. It is the ancient Buddhist book "Diamond Wisdom", the lines from which are given above.

This book holds the ancient knowledge that we used to turn Andean International into a company with annual revenues of over one hundred million dollars.

At the beginning it would be good to know a little about this important book in order to better understand its role in the history of the Eastern world.

"Diamond Wisdom" is the first book known on Earth that was printed and not written by hand. The British Museum has a copy dating from 868. This predates the publication of the Gutenberg Bible by almost six hundred years.

The "Diamond Wisdom" contains the teachings of the Buddha, which is about two and a half thousand years old. At first it was transmitted orally, and then, with the development of writing, it was inscribed on long palm leaves. The words of the book were scratched on strong leaves with a needle, and then soot was rubbed into the scratches. In southern Asia, there are still quite books read made in this way.

Usually, these palm pages were fastened together in one of two ways: either the middle of the bundle of leaves was pierced with an awl and tied, passing the thread through the resulting hole, or simply wrapped in cloth.

The "Diamond Wisdom" teaching was given by the Buddha in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, supposedly four thousand years old. About a thousand years ago this book came to Tibet and was translated into Tibetan. For centuries in Tibet, it was printed in the following way: the text was cut out on wooden boards, covered with paint, long strips of home-made paper were applied, pressed, and then rolled with a roller. These long paper sheets - xylographs - were kept in saffron or burgundy fabric, just as in the days of palm leaf books.

"Diamond Wisdom" spread to other great Asian countries such as China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia. Over the past twenty-five centuries, it has been reprinted countless times in the languages ​​of these countries. This wisdom has been preserved in the oral tradition. It was transmitted along an uninterrupted chain from teacher to student, who later also became a teacher. In Mongolia, the book was considered so important that every family always had a copy of it, carefully kept on the home altar. Once or twice a year, local Buddhist monks were invited to the house to read it aloud and thereby convey the blessing of wisdom.

To comprehend "Diamond Wisdom" is not easy. Its true meaning, as well as other teachings of the Buddha, is hidden by a veil of mystical language, which can only be lifted by a living teacher, using skillful explanations recorded for centuries. There are three versions of the commentary in Tibetan, ranging in age from sixteen to eleven hundred years.

Luckily, we recently discovered another commentary on this piece that is more up-to-date and much easier to understand. Within twelve recent years A group of colleagues and I are working on the Asian Classics Input Project, which aims to preserve the old books of Tibetan wisdom. In the past millennium, these books were kept in the large monastic libraries of the Land of Snows, protected from wars and invasions by the impenetrable natural wall of the Himalayan mountains. With the invention of the airplane, things changed. In 1950, Tibet was invaded by communist China.

During the invasion and the occupation that continues to this day, about five thousand libraries and monastic schools that stored these great books were destroyed. Only a very small part of them were taken with them by refugees who made a dangerous passage through the Himalayas in the region of Mount Everest. To get a sense of the extent of the damage done, imagine that some powerful nation attacked the United States and burned almost all colleges and universities, as well as all the books in the libraries. Imagine that only those books remained that were taken with them by refugees who reached Mexico in a few weeks or months on foot.

Under the ACIP project, Tibetan emigrants in camps in India were trained to write these endangered texts onto computer disks, which were then compiled on CD-ROM or on the Internet and distributed free of charge to thousands of scholars around the world. To date, one hundred and fifty thousand pages of woodcuts have already been saved, found in the most remote corners and never before known outside of Tibet.

In the very depths of the collection of manuscripts of St. Petersburg, already covered with the dust of time, we were lucky to find a copy of a wonderful commentary on the "Diamond Wisdom", brought to Russia by one of the first researchers of Tibet. This treatise entitled "Sunshine on the Path to Freedom" was written by a great Tibetan lama named Choney Drakpa Shedrup, who lived from 1675 to 1748. Coincidentally, he was a native of the Tibetan monastery Sera Mei, where I completed my studies. Choney Drakpa Shedrup went down in history under the name Choney Lama or Lama from Choney, a region in eastern Tibet.

In this book we will use excerpts from the Diamond Wisdom text and Sunlight on the Path to Freedom, as well as an oral commentary that has been transmitted for two and a half thousand years and that I received from my teachers. We conclude with specific cases from the hidden world of the international diamond business that I have worked in to demonstrate how ancient wisdom can help you achieve more sustainable success in both your work and personal life.

Chapter 2 What the title of the book means

Already in the very name of "Diamond Wisdom" there is a huge secret knowledge, and before we begin to study how to achieve success with the help of this wisdom, it is desirable to understand what its meaning is. We'll start by explaining the full name by Choney Lama himself.

The original text begins with the words: "In the ancient language of India, this teaching is called "Arya Vajra ...". Now we will give a translation of each of these words from Sanskrit into Russian. "Arya" means "high", "Vajra" is translated as "diamond". "Chedaka" is "cutter" and "prajnya" is "wisdom". "Param" means "to the other side", "ita" - "gone", both words together are translated as "perfection". "Nama" - "called", "Maha" - "greatness", refers to the concept of "compassion". "Yapa" means "way" and "Sutra" means "ancient book".

The most important word for explaining how to achieve success in business and in your personal life is "diamond". In the ancient Tibetan tradition, the diamond symbolizes the hidden potential of things, which we usually call "emptiness". A businessman who fully realizes the hidden potential of things receives the key to success, both in the monetary sphere and in any other. And now we will focus on the three most important properties of a diamond, because of which it resembles the potential present in everything.

First, pure diamond is very close in its composition to an absolutely transparent physical substance. Imagine a large sheet of window glass, such as the one on the door leading to the garden. If you look at it directly, the glass looks so transparent that guests by mistake can "enter" it and smash it to smithereens. But if we look along its edge, it, like most other glasses, will have a dark green color. Glass acquires a similar shade due to the smallest inclusions of iron impurities contained in it. This is most noticeable when viewed through a thick layer of glass.

A pure diamond is completely different. In trading, we determine the value and quality of diamonds primarily by their lack of color: completely colorless diamonds are the rarest and most expensive. We classify them<Ш», но вся система классификации алмазов, по сути, является исторической ошибкой. Дело в том, что на тот момент, когда была придумана современная система классификации алмазов, уже существовало много других. К категории "А" относились очень чистые алмазы самого высокого качества, за ними следовали алмазы чуть похуже, которые причислялись к категории «В», и так дальше по латинскому алфавиту. К сожалению, у каждой компании были свои представления о том, каким алмазам присваивать категорию «А», «В» и так далее, и это, конечно же, доставляло покупателям множество проблем. К одной и той же букве в одной фирме могли отнести почти бесцветный алмаз, и камень желтоватого оттенка - в другой. Поэтому разработчик новой системы классификации решил просто начать с незанятой буквы алфавита и назвал самый высококачественный и бесцветный камень буквой "^".

If there were a class "III" diamond of such dimensions that it could be used to make window glass, then no matter how much and at what angle you look through it, it would be absolutely transparent. This is the nature of everything that is absolutely pure or transparent. If you put such a diamond wall several feet wide between you and another person and removed the light that could be reflected in it, then you would not see it at all.

The hidden potential for success that Diamond Wisdom talks about is like a transparent diamond wall. He is always and everywhere around us. Every object and every person contains this potential. To achieve tangible personal or financial success, you need to use it. Ironically, despite the fact that every thing and every person is literally saturated with this potential, he himself remains invisible. We just can't see it. The goal of Diamond Wisdom is to teach us to see this potential.

There is another reason why the diamond plays such an important role. It is the hardest material in the world. Nothing but another diamond can scratch it. According to one method of measuring the hardness of materials, the Knoop scale, a diamond is three times harder than the natural mineral ruby ​​that follows it. Diamonds themselves can scratch each other only if the stone that is being scratched has a so-called “soft section”. This is exactly how diamonds are cut. Although a diamond cannot be scratched, it can be split or split along the edge, as a log is split with an ax when chopping firewood. To cut a diamond, they take fragments left over from the cutting of other larger diamonds, or pieces of defective rough stone that is not pure enough to make a diamond, break them and grind them into powder.

This diamond powder is carefully sieved until it becomes very fine, and then poured and stored in a glass bottle. Next, a large disc is prepared from steel of the highest hardening with a corrugated surface, on which narrow lines are drawn until all of it is covered with a fine mesh. Then purified oil is applied to the disk itself. Most often it is olive oil, but each cutter has his own secret recipe for making the “right” mixture.

The steel disk is fixed on an axle connected to the motor, on a massive table, which is additionally reinforced with steel spacers. This is necessary to prevent vibration when the wheel begins to rotate at hundreds of revolutions per minute. The diamond powder is then poured into the oil and stirred until a gray paste forms.

Rough diamonds often look no more impressive than ordinary pebbles - a small clear crystal in a cloudy brown or olive green shell. It happens that you are unlucky, and almost the entire stone consists of such a shell. That means you cut it halfway down only to find that the diamond you paid so much for is worthless.

So, a rough piece of diamond is fixed in a "cup" called "additional", which in turn is attached to a bracket, similar to the suspension pickup in old turntables. For greater fixation, the stone is glued to the "dop" with a special heat-resistant glue, which does not soften from heating the diamond during cutting.

When I first got an apprenticeship with a master cutter named Sam Shmulev, we used a paste made from water and asbestos as glue. When the stone was heated, the mixture dried and sintered, firmly holding the diamond in the dope. We made this paste by chewing asbestos; in those days, no one knew that even a small piece of asbestos could cause cancer. I remember one carver who developed a large swelling in his throat because of this.

After the motor is turned on, the disk should begin to rotate without the slightest vibration, so it took more than one hour to balance it, especially on older cutting machines.

The cutter then sits on a high seat that looks like a high chair and leans over the disc. He takes the bracket, to which the raw stone is glued, and lightly touches with it the disk spinning at high speed.

Diamond is immeasurably harder than steel, so if the craftsman presses the rough stone too hard against the sharp edge of the disc, he can damage the cutting disc itself. Therefore, you only lightly touch the disc with the stone, and then,

turn the arm upside down and bring it up to your eyes. In your other hand you have a magnifying glass called a loupe. An experienced cutter brings the stone to his face in one smooth movement, checks the polishing of the diamond with a magnifying glass, and returns it to the disk again. He repeats this procedure several times a minute, and this is a bit like a cheerleader spinning his baton.

As you pick up the stone, you run it along a towel slung over your shoulder to remove oil and diamond dust from its surface. In one or two minutes, the disk carved a tiny flat spot on the surface, which will become your “window” inside the stone. You peer into this “window” through a magnifying glass to see if there are any stains, cracks or other flaws inside, so that later they can either be ground off or placed as close as possible to the edge of the diamond while the stone is shaped. For example, a black speck on the sharp edge of a diamond can reflect off its bottom edge and create the effect of a large number of spots. And although there is only one speck, this will completely devalue the finished piece of jewelry.

The process of looking at a stone through a "window" and trying to imagine exactly what the finished diamond will look like is very similar to planning and marking out a piece of marble by a sculptor to better exploit the stone's natural hues and texture. In order to plan out a large stone, sometimes you have to “cut through” several “windows” in its shell. This is necessary in order to subsequently study the diamond for several weeks or even months, making sketches of geometric models and choosing among them the one that will allow you to get the largest possible diamond.

Small black dots, which can occasionally be seen inside a diamond, are in fact very often small diamond crystals, on top of which layers of the future large crystal grew. Diamond is the most common coal, which first melted at a high temperature in the mouth of a volcano, and then for a long time was in the ground under high pressure, which changed its atomic structure and turned it into a diamond. In general, tiny diamonds can be formed under various conditions, for example, they can be formed at the moment of impact of a coal-bearing meteorite on the Earth's surface. After the explosion caused by such a collision, a rather large crater with a diamond placer in the center can form.

These pretty little "diamonds in a diamond" can appear as black inclusions if they line up along the appropriate axis, or form an invisible pocket inside a rough stone. In both cases, this causes great inconvenience to the cutter, as such stones have tiny areas of internal pressure. When the diamond is lowered onto the grinding wheel and the cutter begins to implement his plan to turn it into a diamond, it looks like the stone is resisting.

Despite the oil, the diamond on the steel disc begins to squeal piercingly. Most often, diamond-cutting shops on New York's 47th Street are grey, inconspicuous, dimly lit, large, bare rooms on the top floors of buildings that let millions of dollars flow through them. This is where diamonds imported into the United States “flow in” and diamonds ready for jewelry production “leak out”. Imagine continuous rows of cutters hunched over their cutting discs. Each one presses the sides of the diamond being cut against the steel disk with force, and each stone squeals in response like bad brakes. And in the center of this howling cyclone sit diamond cutters accustomed to noise with calm and deeply concentrated faces.

The friction between the stone and the grinding wheel generates so much heat that the diamond being cut becomes hot and begins to fluoresce dark crimson. Its temperature is so high that it can burn you like coal.

As soon as the heat reaches the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe inner pocket where the foreign inclusion is located, the stone can explode in an instant and scatter from the disk in tiny fragments throughout the room with great speed. If it was a big stone, then you have the opportunity to witness how several hundred thousand dollars turn into diamond sand.

Why is the fact that diamond is the most durable material in the world so important to us? Think about what it means to be the very best: the highest, the lowest, the longest, the biggest. Our consciousness refuses to accept this idea. Nothing can be so tall that one more inch cannot be added to it, and nothing can be so short that it cannot be shortened just a little more. But there really is nothing harder than a diamond!

The hidden potential of things that we talked about is that absolute concept that we cannot apply at the physical level. It is the highest nature of every thing, it is the absolute truth of every person and every object. The hardness of a diamond is what allows it to come closest to the absolute. It has the highest hardness that can be. This is the second reason why the diamond is a metaphor for the absolute.

Now let's think about those pieces of diamond that scattered across the floor of the cutting shop after the stone exploded on the grinding wheel. They are reminiscent of the third important quality of a diamond. The atomic structure of each diamond is very simple - it is pure carbon. The carbon of a pencil lead and the carbon of a diamond are actually the same substance. The carbon atoms in the lead are connected to each other by layers, the bond between which is very weak. This can be compared to slate rocks or layers of thin dough. When you draw the tip of a pencil over a sheet, these layers separate from one another and remain on paper. This is called "drawing with a pencil."

The atoms of pure carbon in diamond are interconnected in a completely different way. They form a structure that is absolutely symmetrical in all directions, which prevents the separation of layers and turns diamond into the hardest known material. The most interesting thing is that any diamond anywhere is made up of the same pure carbon and has the same atomic structure. This means that the tiniest piece of diamond is absolutely identical at the molecular level to any other piece of diamond.

What does this have to do with hidden potential? We have already said that all objects in the world - both inanimate, such as planets or stones, and animate, ants or people - have their own hidden potential, their own absolute nature. The thing is that each of the examples of hidden potential, each of its cases is absolutely

the same as everyone else. In this sense, the hidden potential of things, that is, their overall quality, which can bring you both inner and outer success, is like a diamond.

That is why the word "diamond" is in the title of this book. Diamonds are perfectly pure, almost invisible, and the hidden potential of everything that surrounds us is also quite difficult to see. Diamonds are very close to being something absolute, they are the hardest thing there is. And the hidden potential of things

This is their purity and absolute truth. Every piece of diamond found anywhere is made of the same material as any other. It is 100% diamond. This is also true of the potential hidden in every thing: in each case it is a pure, absolute reality, exactly the same as in any other example.

But still, why is the book called "Diamond Wisdom"? Some of the early English translations omitted or changed the second part of the title. This happened because the translators did not fully understand how significant and important it is for understanding the meaning of the book. Therefore, in some early editions, the book was simply called "Diamond".

Here we will briefly say that there are two ways to see the hidden potential of things. The first way to "see" is to read the explanations that are given in this book and then sit down and think deeply about them until you understand them and can apply them. The second way is to enter into a state of deep meditation and "see" the potential directly through your own consciousness.

The second way has much more power, although anyone who understands its principles can successfully use the potential. One who has seen the potential directly soon realizes that he has seen something absolute. Naturally, he begins to look in his mind for something to compare it with. The closest thing to absolute reality in our ordinary world is a diamond, because it has absolute hardness.

Although the diamond is the closest thing to the absolute in our everyday life, even it cannot be compared with the hidden potential that we have talked about, and which we will continue to talk about in the following chapters. Potential is something truly absolute.

In this sense, a diamond is not a very adequate metaphor for hidden potential, but it can be "cut" or perfected by a power that is truly absolute. That is why the book is called Diamond Wisdom. This wisdom teaches things even more absolute than a diamond, although it comes closest to the absolute in the ordinary world around us.

If this doesn't sound very clear, don't worry. The goal of Diamond Wisdom is to help you figure this out. The secret to understanding how things really work, the secret to achieving true and lasting success in our daily lives and in business, is something very deep and hard to figure out without effort. But it is certainly worth the effort.

Chapter 3 How Diamond Wisdom Came to Be

We are almost ready to go on an exciting journey through uncharted territory and get acquainted with ideas for managing our lives and our business that have never been described in modern literature before. But first it will be useful to know where and when this teaching arose.

To begin with, we will turn to the text of Diamond Wisdom itself. Ancient India more than two thousand years ago. A wealthy prince named Siddhartha won the hearts of the people of his country, much like another man named Christos would do five centuries later. The prince grew up in a rich and luxurious palace, but after he saw the suffering of people, saw that the loss of all the most precious things that we have is inevitable, he left the palace alone and went in search of an answer to the question: what makes us suffer And how can this suffering be stopped?

He reached an absolute understanding of this and began to teach his way to other people. Many of them left their homes and followed him, agreeing to a very simple life, the life of monks, free from possessions and pure in their thoughts, since they did not have to bear the burden of remembering what and who they own.

Many years later, one of his students spoke about how the “Diamond Wisdom” sounded for the first time. He speaks of his teacher, the Buddha, and calls him "The Conqueror":

Once I heard the Buddha say these words.

The victor lived in Shravasti, in the grove of Anata Pindada, in the gardens of Prince Jetavan. With him there was a great congregation of 1250 monks, disciples of the first level, and innumerable Bodhisattvas*, all of them great and holy.

“Once I heard the Buddha say these words,” is how ancient books of wisdom usually begin, most of which were written much later, when the Buddha had already passed away from our world. In those days, people had an excellent memory, and they memorized the instructions given by the teacher from the first time.

And the word "once" here has an important meaning. First, it indicates the very high intellectual level of the common people in ancient India. They not only memorized the entire teaching at once, but also understood its deep essence. This word also has a second meaning. The Buddha gave this teaching only once. This means that the wisdom that it contains - the knowledge of how things really happen - is unique and precious for our world. Choney Lama, in his commentary on Diamond Wisdom, goes into more detail about how and where this great teaching was given. In the passage below, the words in bold are quotations from Diamond Wisdom itself:

This describes the scene in which the Buddha gives this teaching. We are told about this by a person who later this teaching

write down. First he says that he heard the words of the Buddha. “Once, meaning at a certain time, the Conqueror resided in Shravasti, in the grove of Anata Pindada in the gardens of Prince Jetavan. With him there was a great congregation of 1250 monks, disciples of the first level, and innumerable Bodhisattvas*, and they were all great and holy.”

At that time there were six big cities in India, one of which was called Shravasti. This city was in the possession of King Prasena Ajita, and there was one particularly beautiful place in this city - the wonderful gardens of Prince Jetavan.

A few years after the Conqueror came to enlightenment, a layman named Anata Pindada decided that he wanted to build a huge beautiful temple in which the Buddha and his followers could live permanently. To this end, he met with Prince Jetavan and bought his gardens from him, paying for them in such a huge amount of gold coins that they would be enough to cover all the land in these gardens with them.

Jetavan also gave the Conqueror a piece of land where the people tending the garden lived. Anata Pindada, having resorted to the help of Shariputra **, called for the construction of a unique garden of masters, both from the world of people and from the world of gods.

When the park was completed, the Conqueror, understanding Jetavan's desire, gave the temple his name. By the way, Anata Pindada himself is also an outstanding person. He came to our world to become the sponsor of the Buddha himself. He had a gift for seeing deposits of precious stones and

metals deep under water and land and use them as you see fit.

The first lines of "Diamond Wisdom" carry a lot of meaning. The Buddha is about to give a teaching to a group of monks who have made the decision, like the followers of Jesus, to leave their ordinary pursuits and devote their lives to the study of the path. But the emergence of powerful and wealthy people is what allowed this event to happen, made it possible.

The royal families in ancient India were the driving force behind the country's political and economic life. They were the exact equivalent of the business community in the modern Western world. When we talk today about the Buddha and Buddhism, we usually imagine an image of an unusual Eastern type with a bump on his head. And if we have seen Chinese figurines before, then it will be a big smile and a big belly. Now imagine a rather tall and attractive prince who quietly travels around the country and with all understanding, conviction and compassion talks about ideas that every man and every woman can use to make their lives successful and meaningful.

And do not think that his followers were only poor monks with shaved heads, sitting cross-legged on the floor and singing "Om". Perhaps the greatest masters of Buddhism in ancient times were the kings, who with enthusiasm and talent managed the politics and economies of entire countries. For example, there is one of the great Buddhist teachings called "Kalachakra" or "The Wheel of Time", which for the last few centuries each Dalai Lama has been transmitting to a special circle of listeners. In the beginning, it was given by the Buddha to the kings of ancient India, people with

extraordinary abilities of perception and understanding, which in turn passed it on to subsequent generations of the royal family.

The reason why I now turn to this topic is a common mistake, both in relation to Buddhism in particular, and in relation to the spiritual life of man in general. Buddhism has always taught that there comes a time to embrace the secluded life of a monk away from the world in order to learn how to serve the world. But we must serve the world, therefore we must be in the world.

During my years in big business, I was repeatedly surprised by people in important positions who demonstrated the incredible depth of their inner spiritual life. I was particularly struck by one diamond dealer from Bombay (recently rightly renamed Mumbai) by the name of Dhiru Shah. Shah's first impression as he stepped down the ramp at New York's Kennedy Airport was that of a short, swarthy man with glasses, sparse hair, and a shy smile. He moved among the crowd, received his small shabby suitcase and went by taxi to a modest hotel in Manhattan, where for dinner he ate several slices of bread baked by his wife Kathy and carefully packed in a suitcase.

In fact, Mr. Shah is one of the most powerful diamond buyers in the world, purchasing thousands of stones daily for Anding. And this rather simple man was one of the most spiritual people I have met in my life. Gradually, year after year, he revealed to me the richness of his inner life.

Mr. Shah professes one of the most ancient religions of India, Jainism, which arose around the same period as Buddhism, about two thousand years ago. More than once we sat together in the evening silence on the cool floor of the temple not far from his house - a simple but exquisite stone structure in an unexpectedly quiet corner in the heart of the Bombay chaos. The priests moved quietly in the cool silence in front of the altar, their faces gleaming with red light from the lamps lit in front of their god.

Women in flowing dresses made of silk fabric quietly entered the temple, bowed in bow and sat down to pray. The whispering of children could be heard as they moved from statue to statue, looking at the thousands of images of the saints. The businessmen would leave their briefcases and shoes on the steps at the entrance and walk in reverence, seating themselves for their quiet inner conversation with Mahavira. You can sit here in the temple and be alone with your spirit. You can completely forget about time, forget about having to go home, forget about daily worries, and even forget about the “opera house”.

The “opera house” in India is the name given to the diamond business, which includes half a million people working in crude brick buildings and luxurious multi-million dollar offices that buy up most of the world's diamonds and sell them to customers in America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan.

The Opera House is essentially two rather old buildings, one of which has sixteen and the other twenty-five floors. They are called the "opera house" because not far away in the depths of Bombay is the building of the old Opera House, also quite dilapidated. To get to these buildings, you have to get into a very used car, park in a crowded parking lot, and then start to fight your way through a crowd of novice diamond dealers, shouting their offers and counteroffers, offering each other battered bags with handfuls of small diamonds.

The partners in the transaction stand one against the other and press their fingers into each other's palm, which in the language of signs means the final price of the transaction. Squeezing through a crowd of small fish, you begin to make your way to the only elevator that works today and does not inspire confidence too much. There is always a choice: either take the elevator, risking being stuck between floors for several hours if the lights go out, or walking up to the twentieth floor, and then your fresh new shirt becomes sweaty from the Bombay heat and humidity. Next, you'll have to navigate through an exotic combination of ancient Indian castles, digital motion detectors, and intricate sound detectors before you reach office paradise.

Everything is changing here. The large offices are lined with marble: marble floors, marble walls, marble lavatories and, finally, exquisite antiques brought from the Belgian office set on marble columns. The fittings in the toilets can be gold-plated, and the toilets themselves are a surprising combination of western-inspired designs with side footrests for those who prefer the old Indian way of squatting.

Behind internal closed doors are quiet air-conditioned rooms where girls in flowing saris that Indian women have worn for several millennia sit at long rows of tables. They sit quietly under soft fluorescent light specially tuned to specific wavelengths, with neat handfuls of diamonds in front of them, each of which can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They remove their hands from the folds of the sari, holding pointed tweezers, take a stone from a handful, examine it through a special magnifying glass and, with a graceful movement, place it in one of the slides on thin white paper. There can be, for example, five such slides, and each of them represents a different quality and value of diamonds.

The only sound in the room is the slight rustle of tweezers on paper and the barely audible thud of a diamond landing in the right hill. This scene in the diamond sorting room can be seen all over the world, wherever you are: in New York, Belgium, Russia, Africa, Australia, Hong Kong or Brazil.

We somehow went out of town to see how the stones are actually cut. Most stones are processed in people's homes with the participation of the whole family. Rough diamond pebbles are sent daily from the huge diamond workshops of Bombay to the villages via a large network of messengers carrying small backpacks and traveling by train, bus, bicycle or simply on foot.

In the same way, the stones return every day, ending their journey in one of the sorting rooms. And then a courier from the Brinks company in small metal boxes delivers them on an overnight flight to New York. Navsari is a typical diamond-cutting city in the province of Gujarat, where most of the diamond industries are concentrated. Workers flock to Navsari from all over the country hoping to get one of the most stable jobs in India. They enter into a contract for six months, usually before a major religious holiday such as Diwali. Then they get their pre-holiday bonus and travel thousands of miles the next day to spend a couple of weeks with their wife and kids and invest in the neighborhood's corn crop. After that, they repack their small backpack and go to the factory for the next six months.

Buying diamonds in Navsari is like nothing else in the world. Imagine that you have to squeeze through a crowd that has filled a couple of miles of dirt road in the middle of a small Indian town. Everyone is screaming, while everyone is clutching a small piece of paper in which a pair of diamonds is wrapped, a little larger than the dot at the end of this sentence. The stones are still coated with grinding oil, so they are a dull gray. In bright sunshine, only a fool (or a very experienced Indian dealer) would try to buy such a diamond, unable to tell the difference between pure white (very expensive) and bright yellow (cheapest).

Cars, honking hysterically, make their way through the solid human mass. The sun is right on your head. Your shirt is covered in a thin layer of dust that mixes with sweat and turns into a brown paste. Street boys crawl on all fours literally under the feet of dealers in the hope of finding a randomly dropped piece of diamond; they are like chickens digging in the ground in search of grain. The most remote lands of the diamond empire are located near Bhavnagar near the western coast of the Arabian Sea, where the deserts of Rajasthan begin and Jaipur stands - the city of emerald dealers, built of pink sandstone. Dhiru Shah took me there in an old plane, and immediately after landing we go to the most sacred place for Jains.

Woe to Palitana. We stop at the last diamond factory, on the edge of the desert, no larger than a villa, and drink heavily spiced Indian tea there. Meanwhile, children and maids peer out from behind the tiled walls and awnings and giggle as they watch the white man pass this road for the first time in years. Leaving this house and this last factory is like leaving behind your past life and through the foothills to make the transition from business to your inner world.

We spend the night at the foot of the mountain in a modest hotel that our fellow diamond businessmen built to come here whenever such a spiritual need suddenly arises. Even before dawn, Dhiru silently leads me to a special courtyard, from where the path to the top begins. Twenty-five-century-old prayers are carved on the stone walls. Here we leave our shoes, because the ascent of the stone path must be done barefoot as a sign of respect for the sanctity of this place.

In the predawn darkness we walk along with thousands of other pilgrims. The air is cool. The hollows in the rocks inaudibly tell of the millions of people who have been climbing every day at dawn for many centuries. We rise for several hours, which are almost not felt, surrounded by high thoughts and prayers of those who walk beside us. They give us a solid footing, as well as solid stones under our feet.

Now we have already climbed up and entered the complex of small, stone-lined temples, shrines and altars. It's even darker inside than outside. We find a free place by touch and sit on the cold stones to meditate. In complete darkness, prayer singing is barely audible. You feel around you the breath and the beating of the hearts of thousands of people and their lofty expectation.

Our faces are turned east towards the plains of India. The darkness in the eyes closed for meditation gradually begins to give way to different colors: pink, saffron and, finally, the golden-bronze color of the rising Indian sun. We are still in meditation. Everyone thinks about his life and how he will spend it after returning.

No one takes water or food with them here, it would be blasphemous in relation to the shrine. At a certain moment, we get up, bow to the temples and begin to go down almost skipping. The mood became elated festive. Laughing children overtake us on the road. And here, for the first time in your life, you can appreciate the miracle that shoes are, as your feet, worn to the blood, are already beginning to swell. But that makes the boots seem even more of a gift.

It was only then that I learned that Dhiru Shah, that short swarthy Hindu with a happy smile, had spent the early years of his life on this mountain at the feet of spiritual teachers. Only later did I learn that during his visits to New York to attend board meetings, he fasts and prays at night in his small hotel room above the dazzling lights of Times Square.

His office in Bombay radiates the warmth of family comfort. He treats each of his employees like a son or daughter, gives money for a wedding or funeral. Despite the millions of dollars that flow around him, he strives to be as scrupulous as possible in order not to embezzle other people's money.

Order also reigns in his own family. During the many years that we worked together, Shah and his family lived in a tiny apartment on the third floor of a small quiet house in the Vileparle district. Ms. Shah was wealthy before her marriage, and Dhira, along with her son Vikram, increased this fortune. The people around them constantly advised them to move to a bigger apartment: “Your children are growing up, and they need separate rooms,” they said. But the family stayed here for many more years. Only the grandfather, whom everyone treated with care and respect, had a comfortable separate room next to the kitchen. The rest of the family cheerfully settled down for the night on the open-air balcony on closely pushed beds and enjoyed the fresh night air and the smell of flowering trees in their sleep. And even when a multi-room apartment was completed in an elite area of ​​the city, they still continued to sleep together in a small corner room. They were happy.

Why am I telling this. There is a very cynical opinion among Americans about the people we call businessmen. In my childhood in the sixties, this word, addressed to anyone, sounded almost like an insult. The stereotype was that a businessman is a predator, dressed in an emphatically business suit, talking too fast, living only for money, ready for anything for them and completely indifferent to the needs of those around him. Think about it.

The world of business today brings together, of course, the most talented people in the country. They have something that is now called the word "drive". They have the ability to do exactly what needs to be done and in a way that no one else will. They deliver millions of dollars worth of products and services with clockwork precision, constantly improving quality while reducing time and money costs. Upgrading and increasing efficiency

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This is their life path. And this is not the case in any other area of ​​social life. Businessmen are thoughtful, flexible, thorough and insightful people. Others simply do not survive here. Business requires special cleanliness. It has its own natural selection going on. No one wants to deal with you for a long time if you are not productive. And this is true at any level. Both bosses and management and even your own employees will exclude you from their environment if you do not contribute enough. I have observed this many times. It is similar to the rejection of a foreign body.

The most outstanding businessmen have a rich inner world. We all have a thirst for true spiritual food, but they have it even more strongly. They have seen the world more than most of us, and they know well what the world can and cannot give them. They require logic in spiritual things. They require clarity in the methods of obtaining the result as well as clarity in the terms of the transaction. Often they drop out of an active spiritual life, not because of greed or laziness, but simply because none of the paths meets their requirements. "Diamond Wisdom" was created specifically for such people: talented, persistent and sane.

Never accept the notion that if you are a businessman, you do not have the opportunity, or the time, or the personal qualities that are necessary for a real spiritual life. Or with the fact that it will lead the inner life to some contradiction. Diamond Wisdom says that it is precisely those people who are attracted to business who have sufficient inner strength to understand and perform deep spiritual practices.

This wisdom is great for both people and businesses. This does not contradict the Buddha's message in any way. In America, it is the business community that will lead the subtle but inevitable revolution in business and life in general, using ancient wisdom to achieve goals in our modern world.

And now we are approaching the moment when the Buddha woke up and went to work on the day of reciting the “Diamond Wisdom”.

That morning, the Conqueror put on his monastic clothes, threw a cloak over it, took a bowl and went to the great city of Shravasti in order to go from house to house to ask for some food, as is customary among Buddhist monks. And when he got some food, he left the city and tasted what he got.

When the Buddha finished his meal, he took off his outer cloak and put away the bowl, as he was following the practice of not eating in the evening in order to keep his mind clear. Then he washed his feet and sat on the cushion prepared for him in the full lotus position, straightening his back and bringing his thoughts into a state of contemplation.

And then a great multitude of monks began to approach him, bowing before him in a deep bow and touching his feet with their foreheads. They walked around it three times as a sign of respect and sat down together on one side. There was also a junior monk Subuti in this group, who also took his place.

And then the junior monk Subuti rose from his seat, lowered his upper cloak from his shoulder and knelt on the ground as a token of reverence. Then he turned to the Conqueror, folding his palms at the level of his heart, and bowed low. And he spoke these words:

O Conqueror, great Buddha, One of those who so departed ***, who overcame harmful thoughts and came to full Enlightenment, who gave blessed instructions to the great and holy Bodhisattvas. O Buddha, all the instructions you have ever given us are of great help to us.

O One of those who left like this, who overcame harmful thoughts, who came to full Enlightenment, you gave your disciples precise instructions. And these instructions given by you are excellent. Incredibly great.

And then Subuti asked the following question:

O Conqueror, what about those who have entered the path of compassion? How should they live? How should they practice? What should they be thinking about?

And then, in response to Subuti's question, the Conqueror uttered the following words:

That's right, Subuchi, that's right. You said the right words. One of those who so departed gave blessed instructions to those on the path of compassion, these great and holy people. One of those who so departed gave them clear instructions.

Now, Subuti, listen to what I have to say, and be sure that it will hold fast in your heart. I will reveal to you how those who have entered the path of compassion should live, how they should practice and what they should devote their thoughts to.

So be it, - answered the junior monk Subuti and sat down to listen to the instructions of the Conqueror. And the Winner began his speech with these words

* Bodhisattva - a person who has taken the path of compassion, in the name of liberation from the suffering of himself and all living beings (approx. translator).

**The monk always had his own bowl for food (approx. translator).

*** One of those who left like this is one of the names of the Buddha. By this name, he called himself instead of "I", thereby emphasizing that he was no longer quite a man, that he had already passed into another state. "So" - implies: like the Buddhas that preceded him (approx. Translator).

Chapter 4 The hidden potential in everything

Now we can already move on to the most important thing. Get ready. You want to be successful in business, you want to be successful in life, and at the same time, you intuitively feel that without the spiritual side, your life will not be complete. You want to make a million and meditate.

In fact, to be truly successful in business, you need a deep inner awareness gained in the spiritual life. Yes, you can sit on two chairs at once. In this chapter, we will talk about the hidden potential of things, about what Buddhism calls "emptiness". Just please don't be bothered by this strange name, don't try to immediately imagine what is behind it. This is not at all what we usually put into this word, and in it lies the secret of any success.

We begin with an amazing conversation that took place between the Buddha and his disciple Subuti.

The junior monk Subuti addresses the Conqueror with deep reverence:

O Conqueror, what is the name of this special teaching? And how should we treat it?

And the Conqueror answered him with these words:

Oh Subuti, this teaching is called "Perfect Wisdom" and that is how it should be treated.

Why is it so? Therefore, Subuti, this perfect teaching given by One of those who so departed could never exist. That is why we can call it "Perfect Wisdom".

Tell me, Subuti, what do you think, is there any teaching at all given by One of those who passed away like this?

And Subuti replies with deep reverence:

No, Winner, it doesn't exist. Doesn't exist at all.

There can be no teaching that would be given by One of those who so departed.

At this point, Diamond Wisdom begins to seem to drift into a nonsensical pun that is undeservedly attributed to Buddhism in Western culture. But that's not the case at all.

Let's see what was said here and why, and how it all can be applied in our business. And it really can be applied. These words contain the secret of an absolutely successful life.

The essence of this dialogue can be summarized as follows:

Subuchi: "What should we name the book?"

Buddha: "Call it Perfect Wisdom."

Subuchi: "What should we think of this book?"

Buddha: “Think of it as perfect wisdom. If you ask why, then I will answer you that the perfect wisdom that I write about here could never exist, and that is why I decided to call this book Perfect Wisdom. By the way, Subuchi, do you think the book was a book?

Subuchi: “Of course not. We know you never write books."

Similar information.

Michael Roach (Michael Roach, 1952) - the first Westerner who lived twenty years in the harsh conditions of Tibetan monasteries, who earned the title of Geshe - a kind of "doctoral degree" of Buddhism. He founded the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP), which is probably the world's largest collection of ancient Asian manuscripts.

Books (3)

How yoga works. Healing and self-healing with yoga sutra

In How Yoga Works, Geshe Michael Roach and his co-author Christie McNally talk about the secrets and deep essence of yoga in a fabulous way, simply and entertainingly.

This book may be of interest not only to specialists, but also to curious beginners. Of all the books on yoga translated into Russian, this one explains in the simplest and most fascinating way that yoga is not just an “oriental fitness”, but above all a philosophy and a way of life.

Garden

A nameless young man, consumed by a thirst for spiritual knowledge, meets a golden-haired girl who takes him to a fabulous Garden, where he will learn the lessons of wisdom. Here Lama Tsongkhapa, Buddha Maitreya, the First Dalai Lama and other founding fathers of Buddhism appear to him. Their lessons and instructions, imbued with clarity, wisdom and uncompromising light of knowledge, reveal to the young man the innermost secrets of the Tibetan spiritual tradition.

Through the story of a young man who was brought to the Garden by the Beautiful Embodiment of Wisdom, the author introduces us to the pantheon of the greatest masters of Buddhism: philosophers, yogis, pillars of mysticism, who give him invaluable teachings and instructions, the language of a parable introduces the reader to the centuries-old wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

Tibetan yoga book

Geshe Michael Roach brings to your attention a Buddhist perspective on yoga in his new book on a specific set of exercises that makes practitioners healthy, strong and calm. After reading it, you will discover Tibetan Heart Yoga, which has developed over the centuries in the Gelug school, the lineage of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet.

The complex presented here combines the well-known exercises of hatha yoga with special Tibetan postures and methods of internal work with consciousness and is aimed at gaining a healthy and joyful heart for the practitioner. Combining rich illustrative material with the philosophical foundations of the Buddhist worldview, Geshe Roach creates a unique program for practicing yoga on the physical and spiritual levels.

Reader Comments

Lucy/ 01/07/2018 I get acquainted with the teachings of M. Roach, it impresses me very much, it is felt that the truth speaks through this knowledge, because there is no resistance when you read, everything is so natural and logical. .I have been interested in karma for a long time, even before I got acquainted with the system of a diamond cutter, I did a lot of things intuitively, but there was no system. Now a system has emerged, which I am extremely happy about and I have the intention to apply this system in my life. Now I am reading a book by M. Roach "Karma of Love", since my karma in relationships is not the best, I understood this a long time ago, but did not know what to do with it. The book is very strong, I get goosebumps, some chapters I reread several times, although everything is written in an accessible and easy way. After reading a lot of books on self-development, I thought that there was little that could hook me, but only now I got the feeling that I can really influence fate and karma, I feel great gratitude inside.

Alsou/ 5.01.2018 Criticism. what the charlatan and other negativity shout - what is bad in these books? They call for murder, violence, fornication and debauchery?? Are they sowing mesanthropy, chauvinism and other negative things? NO! Before you say something, create something for the owl first. useful to everyone! And remember about karma, it will definitely return to everyone!

Alexander/ 12.12.2017 The Diamond Cutter is a very powerful book for those who are somewhat familiar with Buddhism. In it, in the first one, a clear and understandable definition of Voidness is given and this fundamental concept is revealed by examples. Without verbosity and very clear. For that alone, my big thanks to Geshe Roach Michael. Om Sarva Mangalam!

Michael/ 10/15/2017 only poz can criticize the wonderful books of Michael Roach.

lyudmila zaitseva/ 3.07.2017 Thank you! I'm starting to understand the wisdom of your books! I really need help!

Guest/ 2.02.2017 Brad. Another charlatan. I invented some Buddhist sciences. Making money on fools.

Christina M/ 20.10.2016 I want to start reading Michael Roach, where do you recommend to start?

Tatiana/ 2.10.2016 to Anna. It's better to make a mistake in a letter than to be so mean.

YURI/ 07/14/2016 I, Usov Yuri Georgievich, would like to subscribe to these two books Diamond Wisdom and Karmic Management.

Olga Anne/ 21.02.2016 Dear Anna, a spiritual person is a loving person.
Judging others is not the way of the Spirit! I send you light and
Love!

MICHAEL ROAH/ 23.01.2016 Thank you all for the amazing feedback! Subscribe to the official channel of Michael Roach https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTx0cZrsTE0RKCuHxF6AUeQ and the official page https://www.facebook.com/roach.dci and stay up to date with all the news

Altyn/ 2.11.2015 I read the first books in one breath. I attended an intensive seminar in Moscow, which was held in August 2015. Geshe Michael is one of the foremost people of mankind.

Christina/ 09/27/2015 Not a single date in the biography fits, Warren Buffett did not buy any jewelry company Richline Group in 2009, and the one that is part of the holding was founded in 1915.

Anna for Victoria/ 24.08.2015 Oh Lord, Victoria! So, you live a spiritual life, but, in spite of everything, instead of "laying down" you write "to lay down"? And why then do we need all this ostentatious tinsel and lies about a high spiritual life, if there is no ordinary culture that any ordinary child absorbs in his native environment from his school years. It would be better to take a textbook of the Russian language and study it properly.

Olga/ 08/09/2015 I am delighted with the books. Everything is clear, you just need to digest and swallow. The philosophy of Buddhism is so easily conveyed - I bow. Such great knowledge and experience are conveyed with ease and love. Thanks to the author and the Buddhas!

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Michael Roach
Michael Roach
Occupation:	writer, teacher, businessman, educator, public lecturer, philologist, musician
Date of Birth:
Citizenship:	USA USA
Father:	Philip Roach
Mother:	Elizabeth Roach
Awards and prizes:	Woodrow Wilson School Grant United States Presidential Medal
Website:

K:Wikipedia:Articles without images (type: not specified)

Biography

Geshe Michael Roach was born in 1952 in Los Angeles. His father, Phillip H. Roach, was a construction worker, and his mother, Elizabeth Earl Roach, was an elementary school teacher and volunteer for public charities. In 1970, Michael Roach entered Princeton University, graduating in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in religion. For several years he volunteered with Caesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union, helping immigrant workers from Mexico. He actively protested the Vietnam War and was briefly arrested for non-violent sabotage of the development of napalm bombs at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Michael Roach goes to India in 1973. An additional scholarship from the university gave him the opportunity to study in Tibetan monasteries and defend his thesis on "The Perfection of Giving in Tibetan Buddhism." Immediately after graduating from university in 1975, Michael became a monk at a small Buddhist monastery of the American-Mongolian community of Howell in New Jersey (USA). In 1993, he founded the Asian Classics Institute in New York City, where he taught until 1999.

In 1981, he helped Ofer and Aya Azrielant, entrepreneurs from Israel, establish the Andin International Diamond Corporation. In 1999, Michael Roach left the company while serving as Vice President of Gem Purchasing. In 2009, the company was acquired by Warren Buffet (Warren Buffet's Richline Group).

In 2000, Doubleday published his book The Diamond Cutter. Buddha on business and personal life management strategies. Its continuation was the book “Karmic Management. echo effect. The book was co-authored with Christie McNally and Michael Gordon, founder of Bumble and Bumble Corporation. In addition, Geshe Michael wrote The Garden, a yoga trilogy: The Tibetan Book of Yoga, the Essential Yoga Sutra, and How Yoga Works. The Eastern Path to Heaven-A Guide to Happiness from the Teachings of Jesus in Tibet, published by the United Churches in 2008, is a study of the relationship between ancient Christianity and Buddhism. A book about the history and art of Tibet, King of the Dharma: The Illustrated Life of Je Tsongkapa, was published in 2010.

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Links

• www.diamondcutterinstitute.org
• www.diamondcuttergroups.com
• www.world-view.org
• www.acidharma.org
• www.diamondmountain.org
• www.asianclassics.org
• www.yogastudiesinstitute.org

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Excerpt characterizing Roach, Michael

“By God, madam, nothing is long,” said Mavrusha, who was crawling along the floor after the young lady.
“Well, it’s a long time, so we’ll sweep it, we’ll sweep it in a minute,” said the resolute Dunyasha, taking out a needle from a handkerchief on her chest and again set to work on the floor.
At that moment, shyly, with quiet steps, the countess entered in her toque and velvet dress.
- Wow! my beauty! shouted the Count, “better than all of you!” He wanted to hug her, but she pulled away, blushing, so as not to cringe.
“Mom, more on the side of the current,” Natasha said. - I'll cut it, and rushed forward, and the girls who were hemming, who did not have time to rush after her, tore off a piece of smoke.
- My God! What is it? I don't blame her...
“Nothing, I notice, you won’t see anything,” said Dunyasha.
- Beauty, my darling! - said the nanny who came in from behind the door. - And Sonyushka, well, beauties! ...
At a quarter past eleven we finally got into the carriages and drove off. But still it was necessary to stop by the Tauride Garden.
Peronskaya was already ready. Despite her old age and ugliness, exactly the same thing happened with her as with the Rostovs, although not with such haste (for her it was a habitual thing), but her old, ugly body was also perfumed, washed, powdered, also carefully washed behind the ears. , and even, and just like at the Rostovs, the old maid enthusiastically admired the outfit of her mistress when she went into the living room in a yellow dress with a cipher. Peronskaya praised the Rostovs' toilets.
The Rostovs praised her taste and dress, and, taking care of their hair and dresses, at eleven o'clock they got into the carriages and drove off.

Natasha had not had a moment of freedom since the morning of that day, and had never had time to think about what lay ahead of her.
In the damp, cold air, in the cramped and incomplete darkness of the swaying carriage, for the first time she vividly imagined what awaited her there, at the ball, in the illuminated halls - music, flowers, dances, sovereign, all the brilliant youth of St. Petersburg. What awaited her was so wonderful that she did not even believe that it would be: it was so inconsistent with the impression of cold, crowdedness and darkness of the carriage. She understood everything that awaited her only when, having walked along the red cloth of the entrance, she entered the hallway, took off her fur coat and walked beside Sonya in front of her mother between the flowers along the illuminated stairs. Only then did she remember how she had to behave at the ball and tried to adopt that majestic manner that she considered necessary for a girl at the ball. But fortunately for her, she felt that her eyes were running wide: she could not see anything clearly, her pulse beat a hundred times a minute, and the blood began to beat at her heart. She could not adopt the manner that would have made her ridiculous, and she walked, dying from excitement and trying with all her might only to hide it. And this was the very manner that most of all went to her. In front and behind them, talking in the same low voice and also in ball gowns, the guests entered. The mirrors on the stairs reflected ladies in white, blue, pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their open arms and necks.