last samsara
Hello.

I am donald.

My occupation of choice is as an artist: as a painter, a writer, a poet.

I look upon myself as a very spiritual person. I am not a religious person. The branches of Zen Buddhism which lean heavily on Taoism rather than on Buddhism have been a focus of my spirituality for quite a long time. In fact, I discovered Zen through Taoism.

In Zen Buddhism,
satori is a state of enlightenment which one tries to attain. When this stage of inner progression has been met, then one need no longer continue in the cyclic path of birth, pain, death and re-birth called samsara, and may proceed to nirvana, union with the Godhead.

The Buddhist goal, however, is not to run off to
nirvana with diploma in hand but to remain and be a source of inspiration to the rest of mankind as a Bodhisatva until all mankind has attained satori.

The Taoist goal is not to leave the wheel at all but to return to a state of enlightenment that we have left by being born into the wheel and adopting the trappings of its societies, i.e. it is a
return to the balance of Nature rather than a departure.

I pray that this will be my last journey through samsara as an unenlightened being.
Contact:
donald p. grau
Name:
Email: lastsamsara@yahoo.com
This site was last amended on:
January 01, 2004
please note:
years are indicated as:
BCE (before Common Era)
or
CE (Common Era)
Samsara -- the Wheel of Pain
Is Buddha a God?
Siddhartha -- a Buddha
Bodhidharma and Zen
Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and the Tao
Ho Tai -- a Happy Buddha
The Sleeping Buddha
The Way -- Meditation
Zen and Art
Go -- a Game
The Last
pretty, isn't it?
all this greenery?

Let us help preserve it
--not as a fenced-in acre
with a ticket booth out front
in some corner of the globe
that has miraculously escaped
designation to be razed
for its corporate exploitation potential
--but in our collective backyard.
So that we can breathe.
And our progeny can breathe.
Freely
--and without shame.
Let us stop shaming ourselves before
the generations that will follow us.
Let us instead
treat their inheritance with respect.
It is The Garden
and we are its Caretakers.
Every Leaf and Creature is Holy
to the Entity that created them.
This site was initially constructed July 30-August 02, 2001.
Yahoo! PageBuilder was the program used.
"Meditating Buddha": (c) Corbis