About
Miles Bukiet is a licensed social worker and meditation teacher trained in Zen and contemplative practice. He studied under B. Alan Wallace, including two years in solitary retreat at Prajna Mountain Forest Refuge, and trained at monasteries in the United States and Asia. Bukiet is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center. His teaching integrates body-based methods through training in yoga, Alexander Technique, and chi-kung. He is certified to teach Emory University's Cognitively Based Compassion Training and Stanford University's Compassion Cultivation Training. Bukiet holds graduate degrees in positive psychology and social work, with additional training in Internal Family Systems and AEDP. He maintains a private therapy practice, leads meditation retreats, and is a core team member of Madrona Meditation and co-founder of Dharma Gates, a nonprofit focused on connecting young people to meditation.
Teaching focus
Bukiet's teaching at Upaya sits inside the center's Soto Zen container. The basic form is zazen, just sitting, with the posture and breath held lightly and the mind allowed to settle without force. Around that core, Upaya's programs build out a wider arc that includes the Bodhisattva precepts, oryoki meal practice, walking meditation (kinhin), dharma talks, and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians working at the bedside. Bukiet teaches inside that framework, which means the work isn't just on the cushion. Students are asked to bring practice into the spaces where it actually gets tested: at the bedside, in conversation, in moments of grief or political reactivity, in the long, slow work of climate and justice. Upaya's approach is recognizable for its refusal to keep zazen and the world in separate boxes. The cushion and the clinic, the cushion and the kitchen, the cushion and the protest line are all treated as the same field of practice, not different ones. Bukiet's contribution stays in that key. Teaching sessions emphasize uprightness, attention, and the Bodhisattva vow as something lived in specific situations rather than recited as an idea. There's room for silence. There's also room for hard conversations about what practice asks of a person in a world under pressure.
Background
Miles Bukiet, LMSW appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Bukiet has chosen to share there. Miles Bukiet, LMSW, began exploring meditation deeply in his early twenties. He joined his first intensive retreats under the guidance of B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D., including two years in solitary retreat under his guidance at Roshi Joan Halifax’s Prajna Mountain Forest Refuge. He spent an additional three years training at monasteries and practice centers across the United States and Asia. Focusing on body-based education, Miles completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training, a 1,600-hour Am.SAT Alexander Technique teacher training, and extensive studies in chi-kung. He is certified to teach both Emory University’s Cognitively Based Compassion Training (CBCT) and Stanford University’s Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). Miles earned a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Social Work from Columbia University. His post-secondary education has included training in both IFS and AEDP. He is a licensed therapist in private practice who also leads meditation retreats and programs. He is a core member of the team building Madrona Meditation (a meditation app) and co-founder of Dharma Gates (a non-profit connecting young people to meditation practice). That body of work places Bukiet inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Bukiet's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Bukiet contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Bukiet's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Bukiet's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Bukiet contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Bukiet's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Bukiet at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Bukiet's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Bukiet is teaching.
