The Name Repeated at the Hour of Death

In lived Pure Land practice across East Asia, this aspiration is inseparable from the nembutsu, in Japanese, or nianfo in Chinese, the recitation of Amitabha's name, typically in the formula Namu Amida Butsu, repeated as a devotional practice throughout life and considered especially significant when recited at the moment of death, when tradition holds that Amitabha and attendant bodhisattvas will come to escort the dying person's consciousness to the Pure Land. This has made deathbed practice a particularly developed area of Pure Land Buddhist ritual, with specific instructions in some traditions for how family and fellow practitioners should support a dying person's recitation and state of mind in their final hours.

The aspiration also structures ordinary daily devotion for lay Pure Land Buddhists considerably less intensive in commitment than monastic practice, since reciting the nembutsu requires no particular scholarly training or extended meditation retreat, which historically made Pure Land Buddhism one of the more broadly accessible forms of Buddhist practice available to laypeople with limited time or education, a factor scholars often cite in explaining its wide popular spread across China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam compared to more monastically centered forms of Buddhist practice.