Frederick Franck (1909 – 2006)
Painter, sculptor, and author of many books on Buddhism and human spirituality.
The cross of the Cruxifixion — without the cross of the Resurrection is the symbol of a mutilated Christianity.
Do you believe in God?
I, I believe in nothing but God!
"Nothing burns in hell but ego" says Tauler.
Does anything live but Buddha Nature, Christ Spirit?
People walking?
Karma walking …
Buddha nature walking..!
If you still have to talk
about Ultimate Reality
See how it manifests itself
nakedly
in
Every thing!
The clearsighted eye turns the light back
to see its own Original Nature…
It is not that things are delusory but their separateness in the fabric of the Whole that is illusory…
… each dot: the center of a circle without circumference …
"Is there anything more miraculous than the wonders of nature?" the monk asked.
The Master answered: "Yes! Your awareness, your understanding of the wonders of nature."
Above all else, Franck was a bridge builder whose marvelous combination of art and spirituality points to a new way of being in the twenty-first century. He calls it transreligious: "outside the categories of both 'interfaith' and 'ecumenical' . . . even less a syncretistic scrambling together of symbols, concepts, and rituals of the various religious traditions." He clearly had great respect for each tradition and found in his art and writing ways to convey "the inner experience in which these traditions converge."
"What are you?"
— I am no What!
all at once
I saw
that the sun
was round!
Innumerable Buddhas
Enlightened…
innumerable Christs crucified…
always the same Christ, the same Buddha!
I am neither I
nor Other,
both I and other…
The Void is a living void
… pulsating in endless rhythms of creation
and destruction. The great Void does not
exist as Void, it embraces all
Being/non-Being
The sinner's ego is crude
that of the saint refined,
distilled. Careful! It may
be more poisonous!
"Do you believe in God?"
"Which one?"
How old are you?
As old as the Buddha.
And how old is the Buddha?
As old as I am
a single leaf falling
autumn is everywhere…
Even if there had never been a Buddha nor a Christ
CHRIST NATURE IS!
BUDDHA NATURE IS!