Opening Time: The Art and Meditation Practice of Tom Yeshe
By Portico
Kona, HI
September 2008




I enter my meditation space and look for the moment I am there to find.  I can’t locate it but instead I see my meditation cushion.  The cushion is much larger than the moment I am looking for plus it has a blue and white striped cotton shirt wrapped around it. Also the cushion looks more or less the same as it did yesterday, and in this life of impermanence I find that quite reassuring so I sit down on it and search for the moment again. I still can’t see it but five minutes have gone by so I know the moment is around here somewhere, just not where I’m looking for it.  The paradox is that the moment is right where I’m looking but I can’t see it because I’m distracted by my thinking. The poignant treasure of a meditation practice is how it enables the practitioner to sit at the very crest of time unfolding and develop the ability to pay attention and notice what is happening in that moment, and that is a profound ability. An energetic, satisfying life is found in the place where breath and awareness intersect and if these two components are not in sync the raw material of an original moment is not visible. The static of old habitual thoughts and endless worries interferes with the view.  Time is willing to craft an original energized spark of beauty and sensation for me to be in, but because I can’t find the moment where this gift is I often miss the depth of my existence while I stumble around in a mind puddle of confusion.  Zen Master Dogen in Moon in a Dewdrop writes,

       Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only 
       function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. The
       reason you do not clearly understand the time-being is that you think of time only
       as passing.

       In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments.
       Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being.

       The time-being has the quality of flowing. . . .

       You may suppose that time is only passing away, and not understand that time 
       never arrives. Although understanding itself is time, understanding does not
       depend on its own arrival.

       People only see time's coming and going, and do not thoroughly understand that
       the time-being abides in each moment.

There is no quick way to learn how to “live in the moment,” but I have been blessed to know, enjoy and love someone who seems able to do this with ease.  Tom Yeshe is bipedaling over the terrain of life and he strides in confidence with a meditation and art practice that has the ability to turn any moment into a joyful experience of play and creativity. Reading about, looking at, or listening to his creative work is not necessarily going to hasten our path, but I think it can be instructive and inspiring to see what living in the moment looks like. I now understand how both practices, meditation and art, are components of the essential heart of Being.  Tom and I were introduced to collaborate for a project called “I’mPact: an exhibit exploring the pact between nature and soul to create infinite individuals.” It was at this time he introduced me to rich teachings of Buddhism, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sally Kempton’s book The Heart of Meditation, and yoga. That was five years ago.  In the intervening years, as my meditation practice has deepened, I have observed how Tom Yeshe’s art practice has the vibrant rich energy of original expression because through his meditation practice he has learned how to craft a tool called freedom. With this tool called freedom Tom Yeshe draws, makes music and writes about the moment he has learned to see and hear in a way that inspires me to want to learn how to create my own freedom tool so I can live my life with the same joy. Writing about her experience with a powerful piano teacher, Charlotte Joko Beck in Everyday Zen tells about the importance of being able to find that elusive moment in our practices.  Beck says,

“What had happened in those three months?  I had the same set of ears I started with; nothing had happened to my ears.  What I was playing was not technically difficult.  What had happened was that I had learned to listen for the first time.  I learned to pay attention…It’s that kind of attention which is necessary for our Zen practice.”1

Art making and meditation is about opening and being available to the unknown. The voice, or the arm, or the eye lends itself to sing or draw, while the mind of the artist and the meditator must open, relax and expand. Minutes are like small wheels turning forward until they disappear into the past but at the cusp of each forward turn there is reflective moment where now exists and it sparkles like a diamond with beauty and infinite value. This reflective inspired moment is where we live, and from this reflective space comes the very deep meditation experiences and very wonderful art. Time is crystalline and of the greatest value.  It belongs to everyone and no one simultaneously.   Every sentient soul can somehow understand this. This is a source of great joy because time is how we exist, and it is also a source of pain because it is why we say good-bye many times in one life, and then finally. Therefore it is through the beauty of human creativity and the artifacts we make that time is passed from one generation to the next. Art making is also a profound way where we participate in the pure movement of time and meditation is the profound place where we become time.

Thomas J. McFarlane in his essay The Nature of Time writes, “the creation of time and becoming must somehow be a timeless act.”2 Life is experienced as satisfying or not depending on how those moments are noticed and expressed. Art making is one way to capture the raw material of Being that can transcend the ordinary and become an experience that is both precious and deeply spiritual. Time is pure, unedited, and the clearest symbol of freedom we have and it is from the perch of my meditation cushion that I learn how to recognize where the moment is. 

Nobel Prize Laureate Rabindranath Tagore says in Goutam Biswas’s book Art as Dialogue: Essays in Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience that “art looks for an ontology that in this case is seen to be one with the ontology of man.  It envisions a pattern of human becoming which is fundamental to all artistic activities.”3 Because the First Noble Truth of Buddhism is all too correct —life is suffering — but so is the Third Noble Truth correct — that the suffering can be transcended — art practice is one way to practice the mindfulness that is required to transcend suffering. The teaching of any enlightened tradition is that the way to transcend suffering is not to be attached to any one outcome, but to embrace reality for what it is, not what it might be.  That to me is also the pathway for a satisfying art practice.  As much as one brings their kaleidoscope of aggregates, psychology, training, and disposition into the studio, or onto the meditation cushion in the essential moments of Being, all that I can know for sure is that time is present, and I have the opportunity to respond to the purity of that moment.  I cannot depend on my teachers or the rules. I won’t forget them if I had any, but in that essential moment of meditation or creative gesture my true adventure is to bear witness to time with my material, word, sound or body and breath.

Tom Yeshe’s original voice and profound improvisational expressions flow from his deep connection to the mystical wonder of Being such that every touch, be that to piano or paper, draws from the source of all Life a confident assurance that each moment is a precious gift to be explored and enjoyed.  His “visual improvisations” made with a giant felt-tip marker nod their allegiance to the venerable discipline of calligraphic arts while at the same time they express a dance with the moment they are made from.  Although the marks are random and unplanned, the optimistic gesture evident in each one speaks to the joy and freedom that Tom Yeshe’s work embodies. The visual lines dance within the tradition of drawing and yet their exuberance suggests the exploration and adventure of abstract expressionist paintings. Here you will find a pictorial language in a dialogue that is inviting, communicative, and abstracted in a universal language of intuitive and emotional cognition that speaks wordless volumes.  Tagore says, “Just as there is no end to knowing a friend, so there is no end to knowing an art object.”4 “The work of art,” says Polanyi “is a ‘something’ – a reality with powers of its own.”5

Art creates a “culture” or a habitat where life can thrive.  Art transforms us because it creates something new, and expands the territory of our cosmos. Tom Yeshe co-creates with time in that precious space of creativity so the new can appear.  His consciousness flows with time, as time, as the “contemplator’s visionary act.  The art becomes the contemplative communion of the religious mystic, and according to Polanyi places art between science and worship.” 6 Phenomenologist Edmond Husserl writes about the original moment and the power of being able to recognize it, find it and become it.  He says,

"The mystery of time opens up to the mystery of consciousness itself. A mystery that is at once a kind of self-knowledge and identity of knowing with the known. Out of these depths of consciousness that transcend the conventional categories of time, the past, present, and future emerge together with the objective existence of things in time."7

Finding time and being able to locate the moment is a treasure worth sitting for.

Tom Yeshe writes,

         Anything is many things*.

         Each and every thing — everything — is something else,
         so nothing is anything exclusively.

         Including everything is the Thing of Everything.

         *The scope of “things” is all-inclusive, including all words and all meanings,
         all thoughts and all theories, from philosophy to physics, from politics to
         spirituality. 8

Here Tom Yeshe echoes some of the words of the beloved Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, who writes,

"If you really understand emptiness it means everything is always here.  One whole being is not an accumulation of everything.  It is impossible to divide one whole existence into parts.  It is always here and always working.  This is enlightenment."9

Tom Yeshe’s philosophy suggests to me, if I can arrive to any moment open and aware my expression in that instant will be as fresh, new and original as the time that arises and is everything. Witnessing anything as within the Thing of Everything is available to the meditator and the artist in the purity of that original moment of time unfolding.

Tom Yeshe’s joyful lines giggle with the delight of seeing themselves become manifest through his gesture and availability. Such is my intention when I come to meditate. The purity of Being cannot appear through the mystery of the original moment if I am not willing to be present for that to happen, and for that presence to happen I need to consistently persist in creating the conditions for awareness and attention. I must agree to arrive on my cushion so that I can learn to see freedom.  The paradox is that freedom is found in my breath and it too is invisible, but the fact remains that each moment is arriving with each breath.  I have learned from Tom that tuning into this ongoing rhythm through the awareness of my breath, my mantra or chanting rather than listening to the thoughts in my head is a direct way to connect with the original moment. Tom Yeshe’s art and spiritual practice become most instructive when I see that the way he stays grounded in Being is through accepting mystery, inviting laughter into every occasion, and rejecting the compulsion to create agendas and a false sense of control.  The teaching of his practice is to show up to the moment, to be available to meditation, and to be consistent.  An artist friend once said to me that he noticed the reason great artists become great is because they are in the studio day after day after day and so they are available and present for a breakthrough to break free.  That too is Tom Yeshe’s example to me. There is a commitment to his practice that he protects and upholds beyond all other distractions, including me, but in this commitment he becomes available to Everything and the tool he has crafted called freedom.

      1 Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work (New York: Harper Collins, 1989) 10.
      2 Thomas J. McFarlane, The Nature of Time, 2004) http://www.integralscience.org/abouttime.html
      3 Goutam Biswas, Art as Dialogue: Essays in Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1995)  108.
      4 Biswas 103.
      5 Biswas 91.
      6 Biswas110.
      7 McFarlane
      8 http://t4om.gaia.com/
      9 Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind (Shambhala Publications, 2006 ) 142.

Tom Yeshe: Visual Improvisations














Tom Yeshe received his Buddhist name Thubten Yeshe from Tai Situ Rinpoche of the Kagyu lineage.  Tom also spent many years living in an ashram in Hawaii.  He currently enjoys his life and practice in California, and the inspiration of Amma The Hugging Saint. You can visit all aspects of his practice at http://t4om.gaia.com.  Portico is an associate professor of art, gallery director and yoga practitioner. She has enjoyed writing this essay while on sabbatical in Kona, HI.

Tom's new piece is like a wonderful summer road trip!  I want to roll down the windows of my car and feel the rush of wind and freedom run through my fingers like his fingers find freedom in the piano keys.

You can listen to what Love sounds like when Tom's pure touch transforms piano tones into a perfect blend of happiness, grace, and peace.  Enjoy!

Someone who has tasted the air inside the Rose,
do you think he'd go back
to drinking wine in the steambath?

                        --Jelaluddin Rumi

Today I was thinking today about Things, thinking about how hard it is to find someThing or someOne you can believe in and trust that doesn't disappoint you. I was thinking about how Yoga shows me that I can find That in the Divine and that I am That Divine I'm seeking. And, too, in the simple but profound act of making art, music, or Love there is the opportunity to touch and see the Divine through, form, sound and skin. As each person shares their Divine essence through expressions of art, music and Love, it becomes obvious that the disappointment is an illusion.

Some wise words from Tom:

"Leela, the Plaything of Playeverything!  Love dis-solves the two great Mysteries: Existence, and That One Becoming Many." 

                                          Jai Love!

"Love is our true essence. Love has no limitations of caste, religion, race, or nationality. We are all beads strung together on the same thread of love. To awaken this unity, and to spread to others the love that is our inherent nature, is the true goal of human life."

                                                                                        ---  Amma

reading this book.

Funny you should ask that. Just this morning I was thinking about "Brenda." I can't even remember her last name. She was one year younger than the rest of us when we graduated high school because she skipped a year. The day after graduation she skipped town. She packed up her green Dodge Dart and drove off to Banff Alberta to find work and her life. I admired her bold gutsy "move" then, and I still do today. And just this morning...I was thinking about her. If I could remember her last name I'd ask Google where she is...but wherever she is...Blessings!!! Brenda.

Sitting with the sun this afternoon was sacred to me.  I was enjoying Yoga Journal and the dear words of Sally Kempton.