A Year to Live | 2025

Overview

In our largely death-denying modern culture, few are encouraged to actively contemplate the inevitability of our death, or the idea that it could happen at any time. The Buddha recommended that we do just that, not to frighten us, but rather to use death as an object of contemplation to help us awaken to the fragile, fleeting, and precious nature of our lives.

This year-long program, based on the book A Year to Live by Stephen Levine, is designed for people of all ages and life stages. In community, we will focus on waking up and living life more fully through the exploration of death as spiritual practice. Ultimately, this is a sustained practice in forgiveness, gratitude, and letting go. Through guided meditations, inquiry, and small group discussions, we will be guided through a process of living this year as if it were our last. All are warmly welcome!

About Vinny Ferraro, Frank Ostaseski & Pam Dunn

Vinny Ferraro has been a practitioner of insight meditation (Vipassanā) since the mid-90s. He is a co-Founder of the Dharma Punx and he’s been the Guiding Teacher of the Big Heart City Sangha in San Francisco for 20 years. He is also a nationally recognized leader in designing and implementing interventions for at-risk adolescents and is a Senior Trainer for Mindful Schools. In 2001, he began teaching for Challenge Day, a nationally recognized, social & emotional learning program, eventually becoming their Director of Training and leading workshops for over 110,000 youth on four continents.

Vinny is also the former Training Director of the Mind-Body Awareness Project and is the principal author of the MBA’s mindfulness-based curriculum for incarcerated populations. His focus continues to be delivering direct services to folks that have limited access.

He has been trained and empowered by Spirit Rock/IMS and he doesn’t like talking about himself in the 3rd person.

Frank Ostaseski is a pioneer in end of life care. In 1987, he cofounded the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America. He guided that groundbreaking work for almost 20 years establishing a longstanding model for mindful and compassionate care. In 2005, he founded the Metta Institute training countless healthcare clinicians and caregivers and building a national network of educators, advocates and guides for those facing life-threatening illness.

Frank has dedicated his life to service. It has been fusion of spiritual insight and practical social action. It manifests in caring for the homeless, serving on the early front lines AIDS epidemic, lobbying congress, teaching meditation and most daunting raising four teenagers at the same time.

He has distilled hard-won lessons from his own life journey and synthesized 30 years of being with dying into his personal brand of wisdom. He inspires and engages diverse audiences from Harvard Medical School students, to Mayo Clinic clinicians, and Wisdom 2.0 seekers. His work has been highlighted on The Oprah Winfrey Show, featured by Bill Moyers on his PBS television series On Our Own Terms and honored by H.H. the Dalai Lama.

Pam Dunn has been a leader and teacher trainer for Challenge Day, for almost 20 years. One of the best known organizations in North America teaching empathy, compassion and other core social & emotional skills to students. She has worked with well over 100,000 youth in middle schools and high schools across the U.S., Canada, Japan, and the Netherlands in schools, businesses and as part of the highly regarded documentary series “Over De Streep (Cross the Line).” Pam worked with the Mindful Schools Training team, participating in the Year-Long trainings offering support to teachers and other youth workers interested in providing mindfulness curriculum for students. She has had the honor to join brilliant leaders like Megan Cohen, Vinny Ferraro, Frank Ostaseski, Leslie Booker and others who have enhanced her ongoing learning of Mindfulness practices. Without question, Pam continues to identify herself as a learner of this practice which often provides a different way of thinking of the teaches. Pam has also provided and facilitated workshops as well as developed curriculum as a lead trainer for the nationally recognized Be Present, Inc. (BPI) supporting individuals of all ages, genders and cultures to understand and develop leadership in their own lives as well as in their families and communities.

About Spirit Rock & Insight Meditation

Spirit Rock is a spiritual training institution in the Insight Meditation tradition grounded in the Buddha’s teachings in the Pāli discourses. Our vision and mission is to bring people to a depth of realization of the Buddha’s path of liberation through direct experience, and to provide practitioners with teachings to manifest wisdom and compassion in all aspects of their lives, for the benefit of all beings. We welcome practitioners of all backgrounds and levels of experience to join communities of learning, support, and connection in our spiritual sanctuary and refuge.

This course is part of Spirit Rock’s new Dharma Institute, which offers in-depth study of the teachings and practices of the Buddha and the Insight Meditation lineage, along with professional trainings and continuing education. 

Spirit Rock was founded in 1986 by a group of Insight Meditation teachers, including Jack Kornfield, who, along with Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and Jacqueline Schwartz, founded Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, MA, in 1976. These centers, along with Gaia House (Devon, UK), are among the first centers teaching Insight Meditation (vipassanā) in the West. Read more about the founding of Spirit Rock and IMS in Jack Kornfield’s article “This Fantastic, Unfolding Experiment.” 

Insight Meditation is based in Theravāda (“The Way of the Elders”) Buddhism, as practiced in Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), and Thailand, though our teachers carry many different lineages within—and outside—Theravāda. Our primary practices are based in the Mahāsī lineage of Burmese vipassanā and the Thai Forest Saṅgha lineage of Ajahn Chah. Read more aboutour Buddhist Lineage and listen to talks from teachers about the roots of our practice.

Questions?

Visit Help for additional information and guidance. After visiting the Help page, if you still need support with the Online Learning Platform, email OLPsupport@spiritrock.org.