when I speak of “I,” I really mean “You.

This book is handwritten because, in its way, it is a love letter, and love letters should not be type—set by compositors or computers. It may be a little slower to read, but there is no hurry, for what I want to share with you took a long time to experience.

I write in the first-person singular, but when I speak of “I,” I really mean “You.”

“Deeply thinking about it,
I and other people,
There is no difference
As there is no mind
Beyond the Mind.”

—Ikkyu (fifteenth century)

—From the Foreward to Frederick Franck’s “The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation.”

I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never
really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary
thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.
Frederick Franck, “The Zen of Seeing” (via parabola-magazine)

Waking Up To Wonder

Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly discover the world.

This apple tree is not the first one I draw, but perhaps the thousandth.  I feel the sap rise to its spreading branches.  I feel in my toes how its roots grip the earth.

We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes…
Our looking is perfected every day, but we see less and less.

While drawing grasses I learn nothing “about” grass, but wake up to the wonder that there is grass at all.

~ Frederick Franck

See also:

homage to Frederick Franck

the leaf’s budding and dying are my own!

Frederick Franck’s to-do list
(at wonderingmind studio blog)

Frederick Franck’s pages
at the awakened eye website

frederickfranck.org

Thank you very much, The Awakened Eye

Art is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a Way of being.
Frederick Franck, A Passion for Seeing: On Being an Image Maker
parabola-magazine: Frederick Franck, “Sculpture with a quote by Hui-neng,” courtesy of K8et on Flickr “When I am totally absorbed in drawing … and have become leaf or grass, when the split between I-as-subject and It-as-object is bridged … I am now in touch with the process of Life itself. The leaf’s budding, unfurling, wilting and dying are my own! For however short a span, IT – instead of Me – has become the center of my universe. It is no longer a thing observed: but an ever-changing, ever-fleeting mystery, which, like myself, flashes past at the speed of light. Then, in this flashing Now, I may glimpse Reality, I may recognize the Self, that Original Face I share with all that is; I may glimpse the Buddha Nature: the Pearl of Great Price.” ~ Frederick Franck, “The Awakened Eye.” Quote courtesy of the remarkable website: The Awakened Eye: Encounters with Non-Dual Awareness

parabola-magazine:

Frederick Franck, “Sculpture with a quote by Hui-neng,” courtesy of K8et on Flickr

“When I am totally absorbed in drawing … and have become leaf or grass, when the split between I-as-subject and It-as-object is bridged … I am now in touch with the process of Life itself. The leaf’s budding, unfurling, wilting and dying are my own! For however short a span, IT – instead of Me – has become the center of my universe. It is no longer a thing observed: but an ever-changing, ever-fleeting mystery, which, like myself, flashes past at the speed of light. Then, in this flashing Now, I may glimpse Reality, I may recognize the Self, that Original Face I share with all that is; I may glimpse the Buddha Nature: the Pearl of Great Price.”

~ Frederick Franck, “The Awakened Eye.” Quote courtesy of the remarkable website: The Awakened Eye: Encounters with Non-Dual Awareness

Frederick Franck - Pacem in Terris

Frederick Franck - Pacem in Terris