Treetop Zen Center Teachers
For those of you who don't know us, we are Stefano Mui Barragato, Margaret Ne-Eka Barragato, and Peter Seshin Wohl. We are Zen teachers and priests in the Soto lineage. Stef received dharma transmission from Roshi Bernie Glassman in 1996, and Margaret received dharma transmission from Stef in 2002. Peter received transmission from Margaret in December 2008. Dharma transmission is a special ceremony dating back to about 700 C.E. In this ceremony, a teacher gives the student authorization to teach the Dharma, or the teachings of Buddhism.
We have completed koan study and offer koan study practice to students. A koan is another ancient way in which a teacher works with students. A koan is sometimes a very abbreviated form of teaching, often puzzling to the rational way of thinking. So we work with our guts rather than our minds when we work with koans.
Stef
I became a Zen Priest in 1983, and received Dharma Transmission in 1996 from Bernie Glassman at Greyston Seminary in New York. I am interested in teaching a Zen which anyone can do and understand. Using everyday down-to-earth language. Reaching ordinary people.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York and while a kid playing in the streets with my friends, the cops came, put all the kids in a van and drove us up to Yankee Stadium for my first baseball game. I saw Joe DiMaggio hit one home run after another. I have been a Yankee fan ever since.
On my eighteenth birthday, during the Korean War, I registered for the draft as a conscientious objector. Unfortunately my draft board didn't agree with me, and ultimately I was sentenced to a year and a day at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, CT. This experience sensitized me to people who are trapped in the prison system.
After prison I went to Paraguay in South America, where I lived in a pacifist Christian intentional community known as the Religious Society of Brothers, or the Bruderhof. I did this for ten years.
After returning to the States, I became a Quaker and was so for the next twenty years. During these years I worked as a fundraiser for the American Friends Service Committee, then (USC) the University of Southern California, where I was Director of Development for the Center of Urban Affairs. This was followed by becoming the Southern Regional Director of Development for the Sierra Club Foundation. And this was followed by becoming the Executive Director of the Jung Institute of Los Angeles (which was really code for fundraiser).
During my years spent as a Quaker in Pasadena, California I met Maezumi Roshi. He and I became friends. He sometimes asked me to work with some of his monks to help them with fundraising skills. It was during this period that I met most of the players who are now prominent in the zen world. Later, in 1980, I decided to chuck it all and become a zen monk, so I went to Maezumi and he took me in, however, he asked me to go to New York and help Bernie who had just begin the Zen Community of New York. Margaret and I were together at that time and she encouraged me to go to New York.
We lived and practiced at Greyston for the next six or seven years.
Later, after I left Greyston, I began going to a maximum security prison in upstate New York. Margaret had been working and when she retired she also taught at the prison. We did this for about fifteen years.
Margaret and I moved to Maine in 2003 and have finally settled in Oakland. We live in a lovely house with a large yard, lots of trees, our two dogs, Babe and Sancho, and two cats, Sadie and Ari. The mother-in-law apartment above the garage was transformed into a zendo and is now the hub of the Treetop Zen Center. We are blessed in having a vibrant, growing sangha.
I collect and eat wild mushrooms, love to play Bridge, the Baroque flute, the recorder, and sometimes, jazz vibes.
One of the great joys of living in Maine is walking in the woods with the dogs. Recently, I have taken up kayaking and love it. There are hundreds of lakes, many of them close by. I love quietly paddling along the edge of a lake weaving through water lilies, visiting the hawks, eagles, beavers, loons, and other friends.
See Stef's Daily Practice
Margaret
I was born in Minneapolis, a.k.a. Luther Land, so I was raised in the Lutheran Church like 98% of the rest of the kids in that city at that time. Actually, it was wonderful. The church we went to had one of the world's finest organists and, through him, I learned of the music of J. S. Bach. I fell in love with the music of Bach and with organ music in general. Minneapolis was also a great place to grow up. Lots of little lakes?twelve of them within the city limits?each surrounded by a park. And Minnehaha Falls. My friends and I used to ride our bikes to the falls, park them, and then walk along the stream to the Mississippi River. It was a magical place. I still often visit Minnehaha Falls in my dreams.
I went to the University of Michigan. It was sort of a family tradition. My great aunt had been one of the first women to graduate from there. My mother and her older sister were also graduates of UM. I spent my junior year in Berlin, which then was still a divided city. I thought I wanted to be a professor of German Literature. However, while I was in Berlin, I learned of the discovery of the genetic code by Watson and Crick. I was fascinated. So when I got back to Ann Arbor, I started studying biology. After graduation, I was given a DAAD fellowship to study biology in Germany. This time I went to Munich. To be honest, I probably did more skiing than studying.
After that year, I went to the University of California at Berkeley to study cell biology. The year was 1967. I did learn a lot of biology and biochemistry, but I learned a lot of other things as well. At some point, I realized that a research biologist was not something I wanted to be. I worked in a lab to pay my expenses, studied massage therapy, and got an MA degree from the Graduate Theological Union. While at the GTU, I learned of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I did a number of retreats with the Jesuits there. Eventually, I joined the Roman Catholic Church.
In Berkeley, I also attended a few workshops with Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche and sat with the group at the Nyingma Institute?the roots of my involvement with Buddhism.
Then I moved to Los Angeles. That was the beginning of the end. I met Stef. We were together for a year when he announced he wanted to "give it all up" and study Zen. I said, "Fine by me." So off we went to NYC to live at Greyston Seminary.
While we were in New York, I decided to become a physician assistant. So back to school again. I worked as a PA in NYC for five years and then in upstate New York for ten more. Most of the time my job was caring for AIDS patients. This at a time when we had little or nothing medical to offer them. I learned a tremendous amount from my patients, mostly about courage in the face of suffering.
I also again became interested in Zen and studied with Stef. In 2002, I was given Denbo. I was also doing a lot of teaching in the Catholic church, so chose not to be ordained. However, after we moved to Maine, I was no longer teaching in the Church, so I requested ordination, was ordained, and given Denkai (full priest ordination) in 2005.
After we both had retired from gainful employ, we moved to Maine. The realtor who sold us our first house here pointed out the Bangor Theological Seminary. After we had been here a week, I went over there to ask if I could take a course in Greek. I wound up signed up to complete the courses for a Master of Divinity degree?such useful things as learning how to properly baptize a baby?in order to enter the doctoral program. I completed the Doctor of Ministry degree in 2007.
I am one of the now three teachers at Treetop Zen Center and am currently teaching Buddhist Christian Dialogue at BTS. From both jobs, I receive more than I give.
I also love living in Maine. The climate is very much like that of Minnesota, and it feels like I have come home again. All the lakes and streams. The thick mosquitos. The blackflies are a new experience to me?one I could have happily lived without. But the eagles and the osprey and the muskrats more than make up for them.
Stef and I have two great doggies and two great kitties. They are sources of much entertainment and much love. All in all, I have been given a rich life, filled with many blessings. Way more than I deserve.
Peter
After many years of zen practice, both with and without a formal relationship with a teacher, I serendipitously found my way to Treetop shortly after Stef and Margaret came to Maine. When I experienced their simple and unpretentious approach to zen supported by the enormous generosity of these two gentle and compassionate teachers, I knew that I had found the home which I had sought over the two previous decades. In 2007 I became a senior priest at Treetop, and in December 2008 I received Dharma Transmission from Margaret.
My life began in New York City and I lived there until I went off to college. However, as soon as I was able I moved to Vermont where I spent most of my adult life. That move was spurred in part by my great love of the outdoors, and over the years I have hiked, biked, canoed, cross country skied and snowshoed across the Green Mountain State along with much of northern New York and New England. To me this is a vital aspect of my life, and I try to spend sometime almost every day, throughout the year, enjoying the woods and waters of Maine. This has also led me to develop the Zen and Deep Ecology Experiences offered by Treetop. My hope is that these will give us the chance to deepen our experience of and connection to the natural world; loosing our narrow anthroprocentric perspective and intensifying our desire to preserve and protect our Mother Earth and all of our relations.
Along the way in life I have engaged in many pursuits and followed numerous paths (including several which led me beyond the brink of a chasm). I have done everything from being a farmer and working in the woods, to being a corporate treasurer before finally entering my current career as a treatment provider and Director of Substance Abuse Servcies for an agency in Augusta, ME. In spite of the considerable challenges, I feel very privileged to be able to do this work with persons in recovery from addictions and mental illness, (which is my particular area of specialization).
For me as a householder, Zen practice and daily life in the world have always been closely intertwined. As I see it, our practice of Zen must penetrate our everyday experience with our families, our work, our community and our world. It is in that context that our Zen practice comes alive and begins to breathe. While we practice formally on the cushions, our most challenging and illuminating koans await us in our homes, offices, schools, etc.
In spite of the digressions I followed along the way, today my life is relatively simple. I live in Hallowell, ME with my family and our menagerie of pets, mostly tending to the affairs of ordinary life.