Seiho Qayyum Johnson

Seiho Qayyum Johnson was raised in an American Sufi family and came to Buddhist practice after receiving the Bodhisattva Vow from Garchen Rinpoche. He lived as a poet-farmer-monk at Green Gulch Farm beginning in spring 2006, received lay ordination from Abbot Steve Stucky in 2008, served as Shuso in 2015 with Abbess Fu Schroeder, and managed the organic vegetable farm and annual apprenticeship program from 2012-2018. Since leaving Zen Center, he has co-directed the Art Monastery in Vermont, begun a somatic meditation group in prison, and been a hospice volunteer. Qayyum continues to explore ways to integrate radical earth and social justice collective liberation activity with art-making and bodhicitta. A committed bricoleur and curious noticer, he is studying to become a marriage and family therapist while remaining at heart a fool in love with light on water.