Where your study, practice, and service come together

A small-group discussion with a teacher during a community retreat day at Maitripa College.

“The point of being here is transforming yourself as a person, and having teachers and community that can support and hold that transformation.”
“The point of being here is transforming yourself as a person, and having teachers and community that can support and hold that transformation.”Zach Rose, MA 2023 · math, science, and technology teacher, Meridian Academy

Formation is what happens when your study of Buddhist philosophy, your meditation practice, and your service begin to inform one another, over two years, with teachers and a cohort alongside you. It isn’t a separate track; it runs through the whole degree.

How Formation Is Built into the MA in Applied Buddhism

  • 1

    In philosophy class

    You learn the language of formation, and a clear pathway for checking where you are in any given moment on your journey.

  • 2

    Through the meditation sequence

    Three courses take you from foundational concentration and analytical meditation to cultivating compassion and sustaining compassion for yourself and others. You keep a record of your practice, and learn to describe it in the terms of the Tibetan tradition and of contemporary research.

  • 3

    In four Spiritual Formation Groups

    Taken with your cohort, the Groups are where you reflect on how your study, meditation, and service are shaping you, and how you understand your own positionality in relation to others.

  • 4

    At residencies

    Twice a year your cohort gathers in Portland for oral presentations, practice in the meditation hall, and time together as a community.

  • 5

    In the final group

    You account for how study, practice, and service have come together, and what that integration means for you and for your work.

“In safety we can be forgiven. In safety we can get another chance to grow. We can see ourselves through the eyes of others.”
“In safety we can be forgiven. In safety we can get another chance to grow. We can see ourselves through the eyes of others.”Jorge Robles, MA 2021 · doctoral student in clinical psychology, Ponce Health Sciences University

What changes for you, and how, is yours to discover and to say.

What We Ask, and What We Don’t

The College does not grade your inner life or claim to measure spiritual attainment. What we assess is your work and the account you give of it.

What we ask is that you engage seriously and over time, and that you learn to give an honest, well-supported account of your formation: one that makes sense to you, within the tradition, and to the people with whom you work.

“Will this change me?”

Many students find that it does, but we don’t promise a particular outcome. What we promise is the structure: two years of study, practice, and service held together, with faculty and a cohort alongside you, and the expectation that you reflect on what is happening.

“I am not a scholar, and thank goodness my classmates were, because I learned a lot from them. I learned a lot from their questions, and they provoked me to think in different ways.”
“I am not a scholar, and thank goodness my classmates were, because I learned a lot from them. I learned a lot from their questions, and they provoked me to think in different ways.”Jane Sellers, MA 2009 · physician assistant, now retired · from her Lapis interview
Read the interview →

See How Formation Fits Your Degree

Explore the programs, or come and ask your questions at an information session.