This weekend retreat The Silent Heart of Being Now, is based on Chapters 10–12 of Tarthang Tulku’s Gesture of Great Love. It invites participants to explore the timeless instant. While part of a six-month study program, it is open to anyone interested in experiencing life beyond habitual patterns of past, present, and future. The retreat can be attended online and in person.
“Within the instant there is no ‘to’ or ‘from’. There is nothing to explain.
The gatekeepers, who thrive on all forms of duality, can find no footing
and the whisperer has no one to threaten or seduce.”Tarthang Tulku – Gesture of Great Love p 117
The retreat focuses on how our usual, linear sense of time shapes perception and limits awareness. Through readings, guided reflections, and experiential exercises, participants will connect with alternative ways of experiencing time and cultivate a more immediate, present-centered awareness.
If the weather permits, practice will extend outdoors, with sessions in the Stupa Center’s spring gardens and meditative silent walks through the surrounding forests, creating space to experience the timeless quality of each moment.
This retreat offers a gentle but profound opportunity to slow down, deepen mindfulness, and discover the richness of life in the present.
This retreat is suitable for anyone interested in exploring time, presence, and mindfulness more deeply. It is especially recommended for participants with some meditation or contemplative experience who wish to move beyond habitual patterns of thinking. Open-mindedness and a willingness to engage in reflection and experiential exercises will help participants get the most from this weekend.
In-Person
Online Only
Free for participants of the course The Great Journey
If the retreat fee presents a financial obstacle, partial scholarships are available. To apply, please email us at info@stupacenter.org.
Elske van de Hulst is a co-dean, trustee, and senior instructor at Nyingma Centrum Amsterdam and serves on the board of the World Peace Stupa Center Europe. Originally trained as a mime, she worked in theatre as an actress, director, and author from 1969 to 1995. Later she started teaching at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten and serving on the Dutch Arts Council. Since discovering Tarthang Tulku’s work in 1998, she has devoted herself to the “theater of the mind” and now teaches Meditation, Knowledge of Freedom, Revelations of Mind, Dimensions of Mind, Caring, and Lotus Trilogy courses in Amsterdam and beyond.
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Ineke Smits spent nearly three decades working with and for refugees—first as a facilitator and later as a consultant and trainer with VluchtelingenWerk Nederland. Her deep commitment to supporting others has shaped both her professional life and her spiritual path. Ineke has been involved with Nyingma Centrum Nederland since 1995 and has lived and worked at the Amsterdam center since 2011. She serves as co-dean, teaches Skillful Means as well as Buddhist Study and Practice. She coordinates the Buddhism Online program, and guides ceremonies with care and clarity. Outside her teaching and organizational work, Ineke enjoys playing her flutes. This is one of the many ways she expresses joy and presence.
We recommend participants to buy the book Gesture of Great Love. The book can be purchased in the USA from Dharma Publishing while in Europe it is available from Lotus Design Shop
Participants in this retreat may also have interest in the August Retreat Surrendering to Calmness and Jack Petranker’s One with the World retreat. Moreover, the weekly English-language courses Understanding Self and Mind offered by Nyingma Centrum Nederland are also very interesting. We also recommend the Gesture of Great Love Study and Practice Program. Additional new courses will begin in September 2026.
