Nembutsu (reciting Amitabha's name)

The nembutsu is the recitation of the name of the Buddha Amitabha, in Japanese Amida, the practice at the heart of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely followed form of Buddhism in East Asia. In its standard Japanese form the practitioner says Namu Amida Butsu, "I take refuge in Amida Buddha," a phrase understood to entrust the speaker wholly to Amida and his vow. The practice rests on the story, told in the Pure Land scriptures, of the bodhisattva who, before becoming the Buddha Amitabha, vowed that all who called upon his name in sincere faith would be reborn in his Pure Land, a realm from which enlightenment is assured. To recite the name is to rely on the power of that vow.

The nembutsu thus embodies a theology of "other-power": salvation is received as a gift through Amida's grace rather than achieved by the practitioner's own effort, a stress that sets Pure Land apart from the self-reliant meditative disciplines and that has drawn frequent comparison with the theology of grace in other religions.

In its earlier and broader Chinese and Japanese forms, recollection of the Buddha embraced visualisation of Amitabha and his Pure Land as well as vocal recitation, and it could be combined with other disciplines. The distinctive Japanese development came with Honen in the twelfth century, who taught the vocal nembutsu as the sole practice sufficient for salvation in a degenerate age, set aside from all other observances. His disciple Shinran, founder of the True Pure Land school that became the largest Buddhist body in Japan, pressed the logic further: even the recitation is not the sincere self's achievement but is itself given by Amida's power, so that faith, not the count of repetitions, is decisive, and the nembutsu becomes an utterance of gratitude for a salvation already assured.

This inner difference, whether the name is repeated many times as a discipline or spoken in grateful trust as the expression of received faith, distinguishes the Pure Land schools from one another, while all share the conviction that the simple calling of the Buddha's name opens a path to liberation for those unable to follow the demanding way of the monastery.