Abstract
Aspirations for the Pure Land were often framed in terms of an ascetic ethos of world denial. While not always mirrored in actual practice, normative discourse of “shunning this defiled world and aspiring to the Pure Land” provides a convenient thread to tease out complex thematic strands in how people envisioned the relation of the Pure Land to this present world in terms of cosmology, social relations, and conventional morality. Was the Pure Land close at hand, accessible through nondual insight or by visiting sacred sites such as Tennōji or Mt. Kōya? Or was it far away? Once born there, would one retain one’s personal identity, gender, and human ties? Could evildoers attain birth there (akunin ōjō)? While factors such as age, social location, and individual inclination gave rise to varying interpretations, in the end, the Pure Land was seen as irreducibly “other” and not subject to this-worldly conventions.
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