Mauricio Yūshin Marassi was born in Buenos Aires in 1950 but moved back to Italy in his early childood. He did nothing worth mentioning until 1973, when he met Giovanni Bertolo in Turin and began doing zazen with him. Bertolo was a disciple of François Albert Viallet, who, in turn, was a disciple of Uchiyama Kōshō rōshi, at the time the abbot of Antaiji.
In 1977, he joined the Zen community of Viganego, a small village in the mountains behind Genoa. In 1978 he travelled to Antaiji for the first time. He comes back to Italy confident that this was his life. Since 1979 onwards and until 1987, except for two short periods, he is back in Japan. In 1987 he returns to Italy with Watanabe Kōhō rōshi — Uchiyama’s successor, who had been Antaiji’s abbot until that time — Jisō Forzani, Daidō Strumia and the Japanese monk Senjō Takeda. After a short stay in Genoa, during which the Stella del Mattino was founded, the community moves to the countryside around Fano, in San Costanzo. In 1992, the group splits up and M.Y.M. settles in Fano. From 1993 to year 2000 he works as an educator in a rehabilitation programme for drug addicts. From 1997 to the present, he teaches at Urbino University. He is married and has one daughter.