About
Leigh Miller is a Professor and Director of the Master of Divinity program at Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon. She holds a PhD and has experience in healthcare and hospice chaplaincy. Miller is a founding member of the Buddhist Spiritual Care Educators of North America and co-chair of the Innovations in Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care Unit at the American Academy of Religion. Her work intersects Buddhist practice with spiritual care in institutional settings.
Teaching focus
Miller'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. Miller 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. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Miller teaches in in-person, online, 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
Leigh Miller is a Professor and Director of the Master of Divinity program at Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon. She holds a PhD and has experience in healthcare and hospice chaplaincy. Miller is a founding member of the Buddhist Spiritual Care Educators of North America and co-chair of the Innovations in Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care Unit at the American Academy of Religion. Her work intersects Buddhist practice with spiritual care in institutional settings. Leigh Miller, PhD, is a Professor and the Director of the MDiv at Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon. She has healthcare and hospice chaplaincy experience, and is a founding member of the Buddhist Spiritual Care Educators of North America, and is the co-chair of the Innovations in Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care Unit at the American Academy of Religion. You can read more about her teaching, writing, and projects, or contact her, here https://maitripa.org/leigh-miller/. Miller teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon, and the recurring concerns of Miller'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 Miller'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
Miller teaches within early Buddhist teachings rooted in the Pali canon. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Miller 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 Miller, you can expect grounded instruction in mindfulness of breathing, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Miller 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.
