Amida's Forty-Eight Vows

Before he became a Buddha, he was a monk.

His name then was Dharmakara, and he had been a king who heard the Buddhist teaching and gave up his throne. He came before the Buddha Lokesvararaja and asked about the nature of the Pure Land — the realm of the enlightened, the place where the conditions for liberation are perfectly arranged. He spent five kalpas examining every Buddha-field that existed and understanding their qualities and their limitations.

Then he made his vows.

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Forty-eight vows. Each one names a condition for his becoming a Buddha, and each condition is a promise to all beings. He says, in the vow that the Pure Land tradition will build itself around: If I become a Buddha, and the beings of the ten directions who sincerely desire to be born in my Pure Land call my name even ten times and are not born there — then I will not achieve enlightenment.

He binds his own liberation to the liberation of every being who calls his name.

This is the logic of the bodhisattva vow in its most radical form: not only will I work for the liberation of all beings before I enter nirvana, but I will make my liberation impossible unless they are liberated. His enlightenment and their liberation are the same event. He is now Amitabha — Infinite Light — and his Pure Land of Utmost Bliss (Sukhavati) exists because he kept his vow, which means that everyone who calls his name is already aimed at liberation by the structure of the universe.

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The practice is nembutsu: Namu Amida Butsu. Six syllables. The name of the Buddha prefaced by the word of taking refuge. I take refuge in Amida Buddha.

It can be said once. It can be said ten thousand times a day. In the Pure Land temples of Japan, practitioners sit in morning meditation saying it on a prayer bead counter, watching the beads pass through the fingers, one bead one name. They say it when they wake. They say it when they go to sleep. Some say it as breath — breathing in: Namu, breathing out: Amida Butsu. The name becomes the breathing.

What does the saying do?

Hōnen, the twelfth-century monk who founded Pure Land Buddhism as an independent school in Japan, said: it does everything. The nembutsu is the senchakushū — the Selected Practice — the one thing that Amida requires, and it requires it because it is the thing every person can do. The peasant who cannot read sutras can say the name. The woman who cannot enter the temple can say the name. The dying person who has time for nothing else can say the name once.

Shinran, Hōnen’s greatest disciple, went further. He said: even the faith that calls the name is Amida’s gift. The person who calls the name does not generate the liberation through their calling. Amida generates the liberation and the calling is the response to it. The boat has already left the shore. Namu Amida Butsu is the recognition that you are already on it.

The vow is kept.

The name is real.

The liberation it points to is a structure of the cosmos, built into existence by the commitment of a monk who spent five kalpas making a promise.

Say it once.

That is enough.