The pantheon · The Six Realms of Rebirth
Amitabha
阿彌陀佛 · Amituofo (Wade-Giles: O-mi-t'o Fo)
Buddhist
Buddha of Infinite Light and Life
The buddha of the Western Pure Land, whose name devotees recite in the faith that he will welcome them into a realm ideal for reaching enlightenment.
- Portfolio
- the Western Pure Land · rebirth after death · infinite light · boundless life
- Observance
- His feast is traditionally kept on the seventeenth day of the eleventh lunar month, and his name is recited daily in Pure Land communities across China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
How to recognise them
Amitabha is usually shown as a serene seated or standing buddha, hands often in the meditation gesture cradling a lotus, or raised in welcome to receive the dying. His body radiates red-gold light. He is frequently flanked by two attendant bodhisattvas — Guanyin and Mahasthamaprapta — the three together forming the Western triad that comes to greet the faithful at death.
Amitabha (O-mi-t'o Fo, 阿彌陀佛) is a celestial buddha whose Sanskrit name carries two meanings: Amitabha, 'infinite light,' and Amitayus, 'infinite life.' According to the Pure Land sutras he was once a monk named Dharmakara who made a series of great vows, promising that when he became a buddha he would create a paradise where anyone who called on him sincerely could be reborn.
That paradise is Sukhavati, the Western Pure Land. Pure Land Buddhism, one of the largest streams of East Asian Buddhism, teaches that reciting Amitabha's name — nianfo in Chinese, nembutsu in Japanese — with sincere faith secures rebirth there after death. The Pure Land is not a final goal but an ideal environment, free of the distractions of ordinary rebirth, in which enlightenment becomes far easier to attain.
It matters that Amitabha is a buddha, not a god. He did not create the universe and is not worshipped as a supreme being who controls fate; in Buddhist terms he is a fully awakened being who, through his own past effort, established a refuge others can share. His Pure Land is a Buddhist teaching with no counterpart in Daoism, though Chinese families have long honoured him alongside deities of other traditions.
Nearby
Written from
- The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra (The Larger Pure Land Sutra)
- Pure Land: History, Tradition, and Practice — Charles B. Jones, 2021
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