The Art of Quietude is the first edition of Heart of Stillness, the retreat format of the Sublime Temple. Five days out of the world — it was held in August 2025 at the Centre Zen de la Falaise Verte, in the Ardèche — to strip away the noise and listen, at last: to one's breath, one's impulses, one's resistances, to what life is trying to say when you stop.
The retreat is lived, in the main, in silence — not as a constraint, but as a companion. Words settle, masks fade, social dynamics are absent; only a few dedicated spaces make room for voices. The frame is structured without being ascetic: gentler than the great traditional retreats, it concedes nothing in depth. The body, connection and joy are fully welcome there.
The days weave together several periods of seated meditation, spaces of relational mindfulness — where attention is exercised in gaze and in listening, to learn to enter into connection without a mask — free movement, work on the voice, and a time of study: the great contemplative traditions, approached in a secular and non-dogmatic way — to widen the space in which thought can settle, never to say what to believe.
A week to strip away the noise of the world and listen, at last.