The Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra opens Dharmakara's story with a king who hears the buddha Lokeshvararaja teach, gives up his throne, and takes ordination under him with the resolve to become a buddha himself. Lokeshvararaja shows him the qualities and the faults of an immense number of existing buddha fields, and Dharmakara spends five kalpas, an almost unmeasurable span of cosmic time, contemplating them before he speaks a set of forty eight vows describing the pure land he intends to build and the beings he intends to help. Each vow ties a specific promise, freedom from lower rebirths in his land, bodies of uniform radiance, powers of perception and travel granted to its inhabitants, to the condition that he will not accept full buddhahood unless that promise holds.
The eighteenth vow is the one Pure Land practice returns to most: that any being who hears his name, thinks of him with sincere and joyful trust, and desires rebirth in his land, will attain it, even with as few as ten recitations of his name at the end of life, excepting only those guilty of the five gravest offenses or of slandering the true teaching. Having spoken the vows, Dharmakara devotes an era of practice to fulfilling every condition he has set himself.