Say the nembutsu: Namu Amida Butsu

Call Amida Buddha to mind by saying his Name — “Namu Amida Butsu,” I take refuge in Amida Buddha — as the heart of Pure Land practice.

Why it works

The glossary to Hōnen’s Senchakushū explains that nembutsu literally means remembering, or calling to mind, the Buddha, and that the term came to mean uttering the Name in the phrase “Namu Amida Butsu (I take refuge in Amida Buddha).” Following Shandao, Hōnen calls single-minded saying of the Name, “whether walking or standing still, whether seated or lying down,” the Right Established Act, because it “agrees with the intent of Amida’s Vow.” The reason he gives is the vow itself: Dharmākara chose an easy practice so that the poor, the unlearned and those unable to keep precepts would not be shut out. In the tradition’s terms, the Name works because it is the vow’s chosen practice, not because of what the reciter adds to it.

How to do it

1. Sit or stand before an image of Amida, a home altar, or simply facing west, and bring your palms together (gasshō).
2. Say “Namu Amida Butsu” aloud or softly, letting each repetition mean what it says: “I take refuge in Amida Buddha.”
3. Do not try to produce a feeling or a state; the Name itself is the practice.
4. Carry it into the day: the Senchakushū stresses that it can be said walking, standing, sitting or lying down, at any time.
5. If you want to practise within a tradition, ask a Jōdo-shū or Jōdo Shinshū temple how its members say the nembutsu — the two differ in emphasis.

Evidence

The meaning of the term and the phrase are given in the glossary to the BDK translation of the Senchakushū; the Right Established Act and the reasoning about the easy practice are in its chapters II and III. The eighteenth vow of the Larger Sutra, section 7 of the Inagaki translation, promises birth to beings who “sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves” and “think of me even ten times”; the translator notes that Pure Land schools in China and Japan traditionally read this as “call my Name even ten times.” Separately, small laboratory studies have looked at Name recitation as a related practice: Gao and colleagues found that 21 experienced practitioners silently chanting Amitābha’s name showed a smaller late brain response to negative pictures than when chanting a non-religious name, and Shimomura and colleagues used fMRI to map activity while eight trained Japanese monks repeated the nembutsu. (mechanistic)

The research is labelled mechanistic because it measures brain responses in very small samples of experienced practitioners in a laboratory; it does not test what the tradition says the nembutsu is for, which is birth in the Pure Land and, in Shin Buddhism, the life of entrusting. The tradition does not present the nembutsu as a calming technique, and judging it by how calm it makes you misreads it.

Sources

• Hōnen (Genkū). Senchaku Hongan Nembutsu Shū: A Collection of Passages on the Nembutsu Chosen in the Original Vow, trans. Morris J. Augustine and Kondō Tesshō. BDK English Tripiṭaka Series. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1997.
• Inagaki, H. (trans.), in collaboration with Stewart, H. The Three Pure Land Sutras: The Larger Sutra on Amitāyus, The Sutra on Contemplation of Amitāyus, The Smaller Sutra on Amitāyus. Revised second edition. BDK English Tripiṭaka Series. Berkeley/Moraga: BDK America, 2003 (first edition 1995).
• Gao, J., Fan, J., Wu, B. W., Halkias, G. T., Chau, M., Fung, P. C., Chang, C., Zhang, Z., Hung, Y. S., & Sik, H. (2016). Repetitive religious chanting modulates the late-stage brain response to fear- and stress-provoking pictures. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 2055.
• Shimomura, T., Fujiki, M., Akiyoshi, J., Yoshida, T., Tabata, M., Kabasawa, H., & Kobayashi, H. (2008). Functional brain mapping during recitation of Buddhist scriptures and repetition of the Namu Amida Butsu: a study in experienced Japanese monks. Turkish Neurosurgery, 18(2), 134–141.

Common mistake

Treating “Namu Amida Butsu” as a sound for calming the mind — in the tradition it is an act of taking refuge in Amida, and Hōnen’s reason for it is that the vow chose it, not that it relaxes the reciter.

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