Akshobhya, the immovable or unshakeable, is the buddha of the eastern direction and one of the Five Tathagatas or Wisdom Buddhas of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. He is blue in colour and is shown touching the earth with the fingers of his right hand, the bhumisparsha or earth-touching gesture, the very gesture the historical Buddha Shakyamuni made at the moment of his awakening, when, challenged by the tempter Mara to show what right he had to attain buddhahood, he touched the ground and called the earth itself to bear witness to the merit he had accumulated over countless lives.
Akshobhya presides over a pure land in the east called Abhirati, the Realm of Joy, described in an early Mahayana sutra as a place of ease where the conditions for practice are ideal, and rebirth there was among the earliest of the pure-land aspirations. His defining vow, made when he first set out on the path, was never to feel anger or aversion toward any being, and it is from this that his name, the immovable, is drawn, for he was unshakeable in keeping it. In the scheme of the Five Buddhas, each of whom transforms one of the mental poisons into a corresponding wisdom, Akshobhya transmutes hatred and aversion into the mirror-like wisdom, the clear awareness that reflects all things exactly as they are without grasping or rejection. He is the buddha in whom anger is transformed into lucid, impartial reflection.