Join Vicara Mary Connelly Roshi and Reishin Denise Leong for another season of Maranasati Meditation – death awareness. For these gatherings, we will read and discuss A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last by Stephen Levine.

We will have an open forum with guiding questions and Zen teachings as we explore Levine’s strategies and guided meditations to help live mindfully, knowing that death awaits us all. We work on our life review, unfinished business, engage more deeply in our connections with others and relationship with life, and make this a poignant, meaningful year to live.

“For each of us, Stephen Levine’s book, with its subtle beauty and honesty, offers wise and grounded lessons. For our society, obsessed with a wide-ranging struggle against mortality, this remarkable book steers us toward an earthiness and humility necessary for a full life. Few books are worthy to be lifelong companions – this is one of them.”– Thomas Moore

Participants are encouraged to attend all months of the class, but each session can stand alone, so feel free to join anytime and attend as you are able! All sessions will be recorded if you are unable to attend.

About Your Hosts

Vicara Satya Mary Connelly MD, Roshi

Vicara Satya Mary Connelly was a Physician and Medical Director of Bellin Health, Center for Health & Healing, an Integrative Medical Center in Green Bay, WI before her retirement in 2020. She holds AS, BS, MSW and MD degrees. She has received training in Integrative Medicine with Andrew Weil, MD as well as training in Traditional Chinese Acupuncture and naturopathic approaches to women’s health. She was Board Certified in Family Medicine and Integrative Holistic medicine (ABFP, ABIHM). In addition, Vicara practiced as a psychotherapist from 1974-1984 and incorporates body-mind approaches in her medical practice.

Vicara has been involved in meditative practice since the early ‘70s when she studied Bhakti yoga and directed a meditation group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She started sitting Soto Zen in 1984 under the direction of Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center where she received Jukai in 1985. She was one the founding members of the Charleston Soto Zen Center in South Carolina. Vicara began practicing yoga with Ma Dhyana Kathleen Kelly-Hoffman in 1993 and has studied with Jun Po Roshi since 1994. She received Jukai with Jun Po Roshi in 1998, was designated to teach as Sensei in 2002, and received Hollow Bones Priest Ordination in 2003. On December 4, 2015, she received Inka, Dharma Transmission, from Jun Po Roshi.

Her mission/passion in life is: “To live a life of openness, no matter what. To bring that energy to those whose lives I touch.”

Her message to all is: “Wake up & be well; practice until there is nothing left and then some. The only life you can save is your own so treat yourself with ferocious love and compassion; we are all in the same boat.”

And she adds: “Through the Mondo process, my life has opened and transformed in ways I did not ‘think’ possible. Life is filled with surprises! This practice allows us to enjoy it all.”

Reishin Denise Leong

Reishin Denise Leong has been in the Hollow Bones Zen sangha since 2005, taking jukai vows in 2007, and ordaining as a priest 2010. She currently serves as one of five teachers at the Zen River Sangha in Wisconsin and as the Executive Director of Hollow Bones Zen. Reishin spent forty-one years in education as a teacher in middle school, high school, college, and finally as the IT director for a public school system. In her retirement, Reishin has been serving as a hospital chaplain since 2018.

After over twenty years of doing volunteer work in hospice, Reishin recognized the importance and value of death awareness. She has embarked on a new journey of sharing death awareness through the HBZ course “Zen and Facing Sickness, Old Age, and Death,” as well as hosting Death Cafes online for the last four years.

Reishin holds a certificate as an End-of-Life Doula through the University of Vermont School of Medicine and a Proficiency Badge from the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA). She earned a certificate as a Grief Support Specialist through the University of Wisconsin. She also has recently been certified as an Advanced Care Planner through Advocate Health and as a Thanatologist by the Association of Death Education and Counseling (ADEC).