Introduction

Buddhism in early medieval Japan encompassed multiple discourses, logics, and explanatory frameworks for addressing death. Understanding Buddhism not as a fixed, internally unified system but as a shifting repertoire or “toolkit” of resources makes sense of such tensions and inconsistencies without privileging one element as normative and the others as second-tier accommodations. It also challenges the stance of Buddhist modernism that would dismiss concern with death and the afterlife as a falling away from the Buddha’s putative original focus on the “here and now” and his no-self doctrine. Belief in the power of the last thought to affect one’s postmortem destination is attested in early Indian Buddhist sources. With the rise of the Mahāyāna, especially in China, it was assimilated to aspirations for birth in a pure land (ōjō), such as Amida Buddha’s realm. Daoxuan, Daoshi, and Shandao wrote instructions for deathbed practice that would prove influential in Japan.