About
Edwin Kelley began practicing Buddhism in 1975 and ordained temporarily as a Theravada monk during a six-month retreat in Burma in 1992 with Chanmyay Sayadaw. He encountered Vajrayana Buddhism in Dharamsala in 1993 and became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in 1998. Kelley holds a postgraduate degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Sunderland. He served as Executive Director of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, from 1995 to 2003. He helped establish the Tergar Meditation Community in Minneapolis in 2009, serving in various administrative roles until retiring in 2022. He currently teaches and supports students of Mingyur Rinpoche. Kelley has returned to Australia.
Teaching focus
Kelley's core teaching draws on mindfulness of breathing, noting practice, body sweeping. The frame is early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, but the language stays plain. Kelley doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include sila, samadhi, and the four foundations of mindfulness. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. Kelley works comfortably with longer-term practitioners. Talks assume some familiarity with sitting, and the questions tend to circle around how to keep practice alive once the early enthusiasm has thinned out. Format-wise, Kelley teaches in in-person, group, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Edwin Kelley began practicing Buddhism in 1975 and ordained temporarily as a Theravada monk during a six-month retreat in Burma in 1992 with Chanmyay Sayadaw. He encountered Vajrayana Buddhism in Dharamsala in 1993 and became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in 1998. Kelley holds a postgraduate degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Sunderland. He served as Executive Director of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, from 1995 to 2003. He helped establish the Tergar Meditation Community in Minneapolis in 2009, serving in various administrative roles until retiring in 2022. He currently teaches and supports students of Mingyur Rinpoche. Kelley has returned to Australia. Edwin Kelley first became interested in Buddhism in 1975 when he attended a meditation retreat near Perth, Australia. Then he later pursued a career as a public accountant and in 1992 went to Burma to undertake a six-month period of intensive retreat with the renowned meditation master Chanmyay Sayadaw. While practicing in Burma he ordained temporarily as a Theravada Buddhist monk. Edwin first encountered Vajrayana Buddhism in Dharamsala, India, in 1993 and became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in 1998. Edwin has a postgraduate degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Sunderland, UK. In 1994 he was hired as Director of Operations by one of America’s best known meditation retreat centers, the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), in Barre, MA. Eighteen months later he was appointed Executive Director of IMS and served in that capacity until 2003 when he resigned to pursue further long-term intensive meditation practice. In 2009, Edwin moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to help establish the global Tergar Meditation Community, where he then served variably as Executive Director, Co-Executive Director, and CFO. He retired from his administrative role in 2022 and continues to lead programs and support students of Mingyur Rinpoche in his role as an instructor. After living for thirty years in the USA, Edwin has returned to his place of birth, the Sapphire Coast of New South Wales, Australia. He plans to settle there with his wife, Myoshin. Kelley's teaching home is Tergar, where the practice community shapes the rhythm of retreats, sittings, and dharma talks. That work sits within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, and the recurring concerns of Kelley's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Kelley's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Kelley teaches within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon. Source notes mention training with Chanmyay Sayadaw. Current affiliations include Tergar. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Kelley talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Kelley, you can expect grounded instruction in mindfulness of breathing, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. Group settings have a community feel without becoming social. People sit, listen, and check in. The teaching voice is steady. Kelley won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
