Contemplating your own death can feel like a massive bummer at first, but there’s good news: how you react to that inescapable fact really matters.

Vinny Ferraro has practiced insight meditation (vipassanā) since the mid-90s. He’s the Guiding Teacher of the Big Heart City Sangha in San Francisco and has led a weekly sitting group for almost two decades.

As a fully empowered Dharma Teacher thru Spirit Rock/IMS, he has taught residential retreats at Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, and the Esalen Institute. Currently, he leads Spirit Rock's Year to Live course and teaches retreats and daylongs through Big Heart City and meditation centers across the country.

He is a respected leader in developing and implementing interventions for at-risk populations. leading groups in schools, juvenile halls and prisons since 1987. He has led emotional intelligence workshops for over 100,000 youth on four continents.

In this episode we talk about:

Why it’s important to think about your own death even if you’re not expecting it anytime soon
The distinction between the actual conditions of your life and how much you suffer
A practice called the five Daily Remembrances, which Dan started doing himself right after we recorded this — and which has made a real difference for him
And some of other practices they do in the class, including the “life review” and “housekeeping”