Dec 23, 2025
"To see is our Original Nature, our True Nature. To look-at is a product of our conditioning. To see is not to grasp a thing, a being, but to be grasped by it.
Is there anyone who reads this who does not recall being coldly looked-at, that is, pigeonholed as a “this” or a “that,” dismissed as too ugly, too thin, too coarse, too fat, too knock-kneed, or too white, black, or yellow, who did not cry out deep inside: “Please, don’t stand there looking at me! Can’t you see me?”
To see is that specifically human capacity that opens one up to empathy, to compassion with all that lives and dies."
-Frederick Franck, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing