Three Year Retreat
On 30th December 2010, Diamond Mountain commenced a 3 year meditation retreat in which 40 students enrolled. The official retreat leader at that time was Christie McNally, former spiritual partner of Diamond Mountain founder Geshe Michael Roach.
In February 2012, while still leading the retreat, McNally stabbed her husband Ian Thorson three times. Whilst McNally later issued a confusing public statement in which she minimized the event as a "game", the wounds required serious medical attention.
In an inquiry by the Diamond Mountain board, there were allegations of violence and abuse from Thorson toward McNally and others. Refusing to cooperate with Roach or the board, the two were asked to leave Diamond Mountain University and its properties for at least one year. Unknown to the board, the couple retreated to a nearby cave on public land, supported secretly by some followers. In April, Thorson was found dead in the cave after a distressed McNally made a cell phone call for help to Diamond Mountain. McNally was hospitalized and treated for dehydration, the likely cause of Thorson's death (police do not suspect foul play, though an investigation is ongoing.)
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Famous quotes containing the words year and/or retreat:
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)