86 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
its manifestations across South, Central and East Asia. The Pure
Land movement represented a simplification of Buddhist practice,
making its eventual goal accessible for lay people who had no
time for meditation or a contemplative lifestyle. It is based on the
idea that everybody can be reborn in Amida’s Pure Land (under-
stood differently across the Buddhist world but generally equated
with Buddhahood or the effortless attainment of Buddhahood)
by doing a variety of relatively simple practices that differ slightly
depending on historical and geographical setting, but that all have
in common the recitation of the Buddha’s name (in Japanese: nen-
butsu). This practice is based on the story of the Buddha Amida
who promised to bring all beings to his realm if they call the
Buddha’s name and aspire to be born in the Pure Land.
However, the Buddha’s vow and his joyous realm have been
interpreted in myriad ways across the Buddhist world, from sym-
bolic interpretations that equate the Pure Land with enlightenment
and refer to it as the practitioner’s pure mind (Zen) to readings
of the Pure Land as a realm reached fully only after death (com-
mon among most Pure Land Buddhists) or as a visionary display
that can be accessed through meditation (Tibetan and Chinese Pure
Land meditative-visionary traditions).^26 Analogously, within Pure
Land Buddhism, interpretations of the practical implications of the
Buddha’s vow range from the requirement to adhere to (monastic
or lay) precepts and arduously engage in constant recitation of the
nenbutsu up to the crucial moment of death (most Chinese and
some Japanese traditions) to an emphasis on the mind that calls the
nenbutsu and understands recitation as an expression of mindful-
ness or gratitude towards the Budhha (Shinran).
Over and above being central to Pure Land Buddhists, the Pure
Land narrative also pervades all forms of Mahayana Buddhism.
It can be said to be a Buddhist utopia or ideal world, as it rep-
resents the social application of the Buddha’s insight. In so far as it
stands for the world that unfolds from a Buddha’s enlightenment
it expresses the Buddhist virtues of compassionate detachment,
equality and all-inclusiveness and, consequently, has a history of
being construed as heterotopia, an alternative social order.^27 The
Pure Land of Amida Buddha is sometimes described in the Sutras
in ways that lend themselves to a radical egalitarian reading. As a