The Sautrāntika were an early school of Buddhist philosophy, generally believed to be descended from the Sthaviravada by way of their immediate parent school, the Sarvāstivādins. Their name means literally "those who rely upon the sutras", and indicated their rejection of the Abhidharma texts of other early Buddhist schools. The Sarvāstivādins sometimes referred to them as the Dārṣṭāntika school, meaning "those who utilize the method of examples". This latter name may have been a pejorative label. It is also possible that the name 'Dārṣṭāntika' identifies a predecessor tradition, or another related, but distinct, doctrinal position; the exact relationship between the two terms is unclear. Charles Willemen identifies the Sautrāntika as a Western branch of the Sarvāstivādins, active in the Gandhara area, who split from the Sarvāstivādins sometime before 200 CE, when the Sautrāntika name emerged. Other scholars are less confidant of a specific identification for the Sautrāntika; Nobuyoshi Yamabe calls specifying the precise identity of the Sautrāntika "one of the biggest problems in current Buddhist scholarship."

Michael Roach (born 1952) is an American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism of the Gelugpa school, and was the first Westerner to qualify for the Geshe degree at Sera Monastery in India.^{[citation needed]} He received the degree after twenty-two years of (part time) training in both India and abroad. He is a scholar in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Russian.

He currently teaches Buddhism at ACI Phoenix, a branch of Asian Classics Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, which he founded in 2010. He also tours the world, teaching Buddhism and ethical business practices. He has founded several other endeavors, including Andin International, the Asian Classics Input Project, the Diamond Abbey in New York, and the Enlightened Business Institute.

Michael Roach was born in Los Angeles, California in 1952 to Episcopalian parents, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He was a choirboy at his local church. He received the Presidential Scholars Medallion following high school graduation from U.S. President Richard Nixon, then graduated from Princeton University in 1974. Shortly before his graduation, he lost both of his parents to cancer and then his brother to suicide. He then moved to a Buddhist monastery in New Jersey with a Tibetan Buddhist lama, Sermey Khensur Lobsang Tharchin.