NYTimes on Michael Roach

The article at N Y Times begins:

"Ten years ago, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, Buddhist teachers with a growing following in the United States and abroad, took vows never to separate, night or day.

By “never part,” they did not mean only their hearts or spirits. They meant their bodies as well. And they gave themselves a range of about 15 feet.

If they cannot be seated near each other on a plane, they do not get on. When she uses an airport restroom, he stands outside the door. And when they are here at home in their yurt in the Arizona desert, which has neither running water nor electricity, and he is inspired by an idea in the middle of the night, she rises from their bed and follows him to their office 100 yards down the road, so he can work.

Their partnership, they say, is celibate. It is, as they describe it, a high level of Buddhist practice that involves confronting their own imperfections and thereby learning to better serve the world."

And so it goes on with pictures and even an audio slideshow. Now, the story might have been charming if it wasn't a bit of a problem for the Tibetan sangha West and East, involving even the office of the Dalai Lama. The woman mentioned in the article is not the only woman involved (link on four dakinis), while Roach insists on still being a Gelugpa monk, and Robert Thurman won't talk to him.

I don't think a traditional framework ("mind your vinaya") can or should be applied in this case. Geshe Roach, on the other hand, should probably change clothes but he seems to be stuck in the same sort of rhetoric as his critics, "Good karma does this, bad karma does that," while looking for a perfect definition of "good" is their favorite pastime. A painful contest in dull orthodoxy, and some medieval politics.