Isaac Hayes Death A Buddhist Reflection on Life & Living A Buddhist Way of life
Anthony "Amp" Elmore Presents Isaac Hayes with a Ghana carving of himself at Isaac Hayes's 60th Birthday Party at his Club in 2002 in Memphis, Tennessee . In the background in the pinstripped suit is former lead singer of the Temptations Ollie Woodson.
“From the realm where there is neither thought nor no thought above the clouds to the very bottom of hell, is there any being who receives life and yet succeeds in escaping death? Thus, even in the unenlightened secular writings we find it said, 'Though you may set out at dawn on the journey of life with pride in the beauty of your rosy cheeks, by evening you will be no more than a pile of white bones rotting on the moor.
Though you may move among the most exalted company of court nobles, your hair done up elegantly like clouds and your sleeves fluttering like eddies of snow, such pleasures, when you stop to consider them, are no more than a dream within a dream. You must come to rest at last under the carpet of weeds at the foot of the hill, and all your jeweled daises and brocade hangings will mean nothing to you on the road to the afterlife. The famed flower-like beauty of Ono no Komachi and Soto'ori Hime was in time scattered by the winds of impermanence. Fan K'uai and Chang Liang, in spite of their skill in the military arts, in the end suffered beneath the staves of the wardens of hell. That is why men of feeling in former times wrote poems such as these: How sad, the evening smoke from Mount Toribe! Those who see off the dead one- how long will they remain? Dew on the branch tips, drops on the trunk- all sooner or later must vanish from this world.
“This rule of life, that if one does not die sooner one will surely die later, should not at this late date come as a surprise to you. But the thing that you should desire above all is the way of the Buddha, and what you should continually seek are the teachings of the sutras.
Passages from the Buddhist Gosho of Nichiren Daishonin the True Buddha "Sage and An Unenlighten Man"
My name
is Anthony "Amp" Elmore I live in Memphis, Tennessee and I have been a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist for over 30 years. I think that I and Tina Turner started practicing Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism about the same time. We Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist have a different view of life and living and in this lecture we give our Buddhist view of life and death. On Sunday August 10, 2008 Superstar Soul Singer "Sir" Isaac Hayes the "Black Moses" died in Memphis, Tennessee. Less than a week after his death 7 people in my neighborhood including 5 children died in a fire. We give a Buddhist view of living, death, dying and the Buddhist view of life. Christians have the Bible, Muslims have the Koran and we Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist study the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin which are a collection of his letters to his disciples called "The Gosho."
Nichiren Daishonin of Japan was the "True Buddha" a Buddha is not a God but he is a person who understands the essence of life and the "Three existences of Past, Present and Future." We all have a Buddha nature and a Buddha is born to teach us how to tap or bring out that "Buddha life condition or enlightenment. In this Gosho he writes "But the thing that you should desire above all is the way of the Buddha, and what you should continually seek are the teachings of the sutras. The teachings of the sutras is chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. What we did in the past is the result of our present, but what we do in the present will determine our future. Whether we are born rich, poor, strong or weak all the results of our future is made by causes we make in our present.
Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism teaches us that we are the writers, directors, producers of our lives, we are the captains of our ship.
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