Odiyan Retreat Center

Gesture of Great Love – Study and Practice Program

Instructors

Caroline van Tuyll worked for over 30 years as a book-editor in the Netherlands, her home country. She has been a student of Tarthang Tulku since 1995, and an Odiyan resident since 2020. She translated several of Tarthang Tulku’s books into Dutch, such as Caring, Love of Knowledge and Mind over Matter. Her experience in publishing made her keenly aware of language as a vehicle to realization: observing our own speech patterns can be a powerful road to transformation. Caroline was co-teacher of Revelations of Mind and The Lotus Trilogy in Amsterdam.

Elske van de Hulst is co-dean and senior instructor at Nyingma Centrum Nederland in Amsterdam.

Between 1969 and 1995, she worked in the theatre as an actress, director and author. She taught at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten and for many years was a member of the Dutch Arts Council. In 1998 she started studying the theatre of the mind, guided by Tarthang Tulku’s books, and has not stopped since.

Elske teaches Meditation, Knowledge of FreedomRevelations of Mind, Dimensions of Mind, Caring and Lotus Trilogy teachings in Amsterdam and elsewhere.

 

Four Modules and a Retreat

M1 – Oct 5-Nov 23: Cultivating Treasures, Maria Helena Kubrusly

M2 – Jan 11-Mar 8:  Seeing Mind with Wise Eyes, Caroline van Tuyll

M3 – Mar 15-May 3: Offering Hugs and Kisses, Magda Costa

M4 – May 10-June 28: Time Dynamic Matters, Ralph McFall

Retreat – July 11-13: Silent Field of Being, all Instructors

Module Title Dates Instructors
M1 Cultivating Treasures for Peace Oct.5 – Nov. 23’24 Maria Helena Kubrusly
M2 Seeing Mind with Wise Eyes Jan.11 – March 8’25 Caroline van Tuyll
M3 Offering Hugs and Kisses March 15 – May 3 Magda Costa
M4 Time Dynamic Matters May 10 – June 28 Ralph McFall
M5 Retreat – Embracing the Silent
Field of Being
July 11 – 13, 2025 GGL Program Instructors

 

Gesture of Great Love

Module 2 | Online: Seeing Mind with Wise Eyes
 

January 11 – March 8, 2025

8 Saturdays 9:30 – 11 AM PST (skipping Feb 15)

Price for course – $220

Rinpoche writes: “We are living within the ‘regime of mind’. As long as mind runs unchecked, we are living in delusion, unable to make sense of what is going on.”

An invitation to transcend suffering now!

The book and program Gesture of Great Love offer a new way of understanding experience through unique approaches and practices. We will explore:

  • the root cause of suffering
  • the challenges of mind manifestations
  • time’s dynamic dimensions.

Both book and program are characterized by a fresh and surprisingly direct tone that invites us to transcend suffering – not some time later but starting now – as we are, where we are and realizing that the Great Love at the heart of being is already here!

In this new course ‘Seeing Mind with Wise Eyes’, we will become clear about the regime of mind and how it dominates our life, controls our reality and limits our possibilities. We learn to see the human situation, including our minds, without frustration, but with wise, compassionate eyes.

The mind is the root cause of suffering. In this course we actively inquire into our own experience. You become intimate with the self, investigating how it operates, when it affirms itself, and why.

You will meet the mind’s gatekeepers! All your problems, or what seem to be problems, appear by how the self manifests – helped by the gatekeepers: I, me, mine and mind. When you open to understanding how mind works, these protectors loosen their hold. Finally you become free; free to choose a more easeful, a more useful, a more joyful way of being.

In this course we will explore the way to freedom by

  • Finding access to the regime of mind and its limiting operations
  • Seeing the role language plays to keep us stuck in old habits
  • Learning the value of asking basic questions, without insisting on finding answers
  • Deepening experience through active inquiry
  • Demasking limiting patterns and finding them opening into space.