Fifty years ago, Sermey Khensur Geshe Lobsang Tharchin (known to his students as Khen Rinpoche) was granted the title of Hlarampa Geshe - a title of highest scholastic honors - by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama at the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. In 1959, he escaped with other lamas from the communist invasion, and helped to recreate the secondary education system for the Tibetan government in exile in India. At the request of His Holiness, Khen Rinpoche came to the United States in 1972 and from that time until he passed on in December of 2004, he constantly gave very extensive authentic Tibetan Buddhist teachings to everyone who was interested in coming. He has published approximately 10 books through MSTC Press. He was one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters of our time. Khen Rinpoche studied under both Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche (1901-1981), one of the two life tutors of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and Pabongka Rinpoche (1878-1941), probably the greatest teacher of Buddhism in Tibet in the 20th century, and author of the famed Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.  Khen Rinpoche passed on from this life on Je Tsongkapa Day, Dec. 7, 2004.

Geshe Michael Roach is the founder and spiritual director of Diamond Mountain. He was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and was raised in Phoenix, AZ. As a student at Princeton University he concentrated his studies in religion and ancient Sanskrit and Russian language. He met his teacher Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin in 1972 in the U.S. and studied very closely with him after that time. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1983 and is entirely fluent in the spoken and written Tibetan language. After approximately 20 years of daily intensive study with Khen Rinpoche in New Jersey and at Sera Mey monastery in Southern India, Geshe Michael received the Geshe degree in 1995 (akin to a Doctorate of Divinity). He has also studied extensively at Sera Mey with Geshe Thubten Rinchen, one of the great living scripture teachers.

Lama Christie McNally has studied under eminent Tibetan lamas in India and Nepal, and is a translator of Tibetan and Sanskrit. She is a co-author of The Tibetan Book of Yoga, The Essential Yoga Sutras, How Yoga Works, and King of the Dharma. A member of the first Diamond Mountain 3-Year Retreat, Lama Christie McNally has spent over a decade studying and teaching meditation, Buddhist philosophy, and yoga. Along with Geshe Michael, Lama Christie McNally has taught in over a dozen nations to hundreds of thousands of people.

 At Diamond Mountain Lama Christie McNally teaches the Tantric Course Series and Bok Jinpa: Setting Your Meditation on Fire, both of which courses are the first of their kind ever to have been taught outside of Asia. Lama Christie is one the world's premier female teachers of Buddhism.