First Dharma Heir Peter Seishin Wohl
Peter Seishin Wohl. who received Dharma transmission in 2008 from Margaret NeEka Barragato, was until 2024 the spiritual director and senior teacher at Treetop Zen Center. He in turn gave transmission to three of the five current teachers. Peter skillfully led Treetop through the challenging transition following the deaths of our founding teachers. That accomplished, he then moved on to found Wild Fox Sangha, a sitting group Wild Fox Sangha, a sitting group based online, which is now separate from Treetop.
Prior to joining Treetop, he had practiced Zen for more than 20 years but he says, “When I experienced Stef and Margaret’s simple and unpretentious approach to Zen — supported by the enormous generosity of these two gentle and compassionate teachers — I knew I had found the home I had sought over the two previous decades,” he says.
Peter was born and raised in New York City, where, paradoxically, he developed a love of wildness — the more than human world. As a result, he has spent most of his adult life in Vermont and Maine, where that love of nature has become an enduring theme that deeply influences his teaching of Zen. Since 2001 Peter has actively developed eco-psychological and eco-spiritual workshops to help people form an intimate connection with the natural world. Upon becoming a Zen teacher, those took the form of contemplative retreats in Maine, Vermont, and Québec, including some in and around urban settings.
Over this same time period, the urgency of averting humanity’s trajectory toward further ecological devastation, climate change, and the ongoing extinction of species has become much more apparent. Peter believes we can make many important contributions to our communities and the world: “As Zen practitioners, part of our challenge is to continually be awake, to face reality directly, and to shed the self-protective filters and avoidant distractions that are ubiquitous today. We are simultaneously trying to deepen our sense of intimacy by breaking down the boundaries of self and other and realizing the truth of the One Body. That truth reveals to us that all life is interwoven in a single tapestry. Out of that realization of non-separation and interdependence, we more fully appreciate the broad implications of the Buddhist imperative to save all beings.”
Peter offers Wild Mind, Wild Heart spiritual retreats in Unity, Maine. Click here for more information.