A contemplative MDiv preparing you for spiritual care in healthcare, hospice, and community settings
Serve with Compassion and Wisdom: An Integrated Pathway to Buddhist Chaplaincy
Maitripa’s low-residency Master of Divinity integrates Tibetan Buddhist study, meditation, and supervised spiritual care to prepare you for chaplaincy and spiritual care work. You learn to accompany people through illness, grief, and the end of life, with your cohort and faculty alongside you.
MDiv at a Glance
Who This Program Is For
The MDiv is for people who aspire to deepen their spiritual lives in preparation to serve others in their livelihood.
Spiritual care is often a second career for students from diverse professional, personal, and religious backgrounds. What they share is a calling to accompany people through illness, grief, and the end of life, with a contemplative and ethical Buddhist foundation.
Where our students came from
You don’t need any particular background to begin. The program integrates scholarship, meditation, service, spiritual care praxis, and formation to prepare you well for your next career or community care role.
What we hear from people answering a calling
I want to find out whether this is my work, and be properly trained if it is.
You find out by doing it, with support. Your unit of Clinical Pastoral Education puts you with real people, with a faculty advisor and your formation group alongside you from the first term. The degree is professional training in spiritual care, taught by faculty who do this work.
I want to offer care from my own tradition, and to be able to serve anyone.
You train as a Buddhist caregiver, grounded in your own study and practice. Alongside it, courses in spiritual care, inter-religious and intercultural competency, and end-of-life care prepare you to serve anyone, whatever their beliefs and background.
I need this work to be sustainable.
Care lasts when it rests on understanding, not only technique. Four meditation courses build that understanding in stages, from concentration to compassion for yourself and others. As you test the teachings against your own experience, your reasons for serving become your own.
Not sure which degree? Ask yourself: in five years, are you doing the work you do now, or are you starting a new job as a spiritual care provider or chaplain?
Providing spiritual care
The Master of Divinity, on this page.
Doing the work I do now
I don’t know yet
The Maitripa College building in Portland, where residencies take place.
What You Want to Learn, and Where You’ll Learn It
Four years of Buddhist study and practice alongside spiritual care training.
Know the tradition in depth
Know the spiritual care field
A practice that sustains care
Care for the dying and the grieving
Care across difference
Lead change in a community
Understand your formation as a caregiver
Watch
When Wisdom Opens the Heart
Dr. Leigh Miller, Director of the MDiv and Chaplaincy Program, tells the story of a difficult encounter during her own Clinical Pastoral Education, and the moment wisdom let compassion reach the patient. 5 minutes.
Two Things That Make the MDiv Different
Clinical Pastoral Education
Every MDiv student completes one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (400 hours) at an ACPE-accredited site. It is supervised spiritual care with real patients and families, in a hospital, hospice, or your community setting. You can do it full time over a summer or as an extended unit alongside your work.
Spiritual Formation
When the study of Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and spiritual care come together, you discover how the integration is formational. A Spiritual Formation Group, taken with your cohort, gives you space to reflect on how that work is shaping you. What changes for you, and how, is yours to discover and to say.
Where It Can Lead
- Healthcare chaplaincy
- Hospice, end-of-life, and bereavement care
- Community-based spiritual care
- Higher education or campus spiritual care
- Chaplaincy and spiritual care in complex institutions and interdisciplinary settings
- Ministry and spiritual leadership in Buddhist, interfaith, or secular organizations
The Maitripa MDiv is recognized by the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC) as meeting the graduate theological education requirement for Board Certification. Board Certification has four requirements: 72 credits of graduate theological education, religious endorsement, four units of Clinical Pastoral Education, and 2,000 hours of chaplaincy employment. Most graduates complete the remaining CPE units in a year-long, paid residency after graduation. Maitripa College is recognized as an endorsing body by APC.
Meet Your Faculty
Study with a small group of professors across the program, including visiting professors. See all faculty and visiting teachers →
Venerable Lozang Yönten
Meditation; campus chaplain
A nun since 2003, a chaplain and FPMT-accredited teacher, and Abbess of the Maitripa Rabjungma Community.
Namdrol Miranda Adams, EdD
Spiritual Formation; Self-Awareness and Social Engagement
President and a founder of Maitripa College. Has studied Tibetan language and Buddhism since 1998, as an editor and translator.
Leigh Miller, PhD
Director, MDiv and Chaplaincy Program
An endorsed Buddhist chaplain who teaches contemporary Buddhist thought, engaged Buddhism, and Buddhist spiritual care.
Patrick Lambelet, PhD
Philosophy
PhD in Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara. Seven years in the FPMT Masters Program studying the major Geluk texts; translator for 84000.
The MDiv May Not Be the Right Fit If:
- You want to stay in your current role and deepen it. A better fit is the MA in Applied Buddhism.
- You expect to be board certified at graduation. Board Certification also requires more CPE, religious endorsement, and 2,000 hours of chaplaincy work after you graduate. Board Certification is only required for full-time health care chaplaincy.
- You can’t travel to Portland for two residencies a year, or set aside the weekly hours in MDiv at a Glance.
Not Sure You’re Ready? Start Here
Many people wonder whether graduate study is for them. Two questions come up most often.
“It’s been years since I was in school.”
You won’t do it alone. You study in a small cohort that moves through the program together, with an assigned faculty advisor and a Spiritual Formation Group along the way. Faculty and staff are available for technical support, understanding how to use the library, and writing and research support.
“I’m new to Buddhism,” or “I practice in another tradition.”
Students come to us from many starting points: some are new to Buddhism, and some come from other traditions and other Tibetan Buddhist lineages. No one will be asked to give up their own practice. Maitripa teaches from the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism; if you’d like a feel for it first, Discovering Buddhism is a good place to begin.
A Maitripa community program, offered year-round. It’s a low-stakes way to study informally with us, get to know our tradition and community, and see how we learn, before you decide about a degree.
Where Our Students Live
You can enroll in the MDiv if you live in one of these states. Coursework is online, and residencies are in Portland, Oregon.
Arizona
Florida
Idaho
Massachusetts
Nebraska
Oregon (Home Campus)
Tennessee
Texas
Washington
Wisconsin
Updated October 2026
