The underworld itself includes ordinary residential districts as well as prisons and teaching halls. Elsewhere in the book, beings receive another human birth, rise to heaven or reach Amitabha Buddha's Western Pure Land, where life supports continued practice towards awakening. A favourable human life still calls for care in how it is used; a heavenly life remains within rebirth. The Pure Land scriptures describe progress there without retreat from the path to awakening. None of these destinations can be understood simply as the end of a person's story. [6]
This longer view gives unfinished relationships and promises a place beyond one lifetime. A harmful habit must still be relinquished; a good vow still calls for action. Forgetting does not remove that work, and having fallen into suffering does not exhaust the possibility of doing it. The person living now is already taking part in what comes next. [7]
Notes
[1] Yinlü Wuqing, vol. 1, chs. 24 and 28, on the realms of rebirth and the original radiance of beings; vol. 2, ch. 19, on different actions and their results.
[2] Yinlü Wuqing, vol. 1, ch. 1. The Heavenly Emperor uses the language of original and separate registration and distinguishes descent by vow from ordinary descent.
[3] Yinlü Wuqing, vol. 2, ch. 7, on Guangyin Tian, the food of the earth and the ancestors of humanity. The judge says that their heavenly life was itself the result of earlier practice.
[4] Yinlü Wuqing, vol. 2, ch. 19, on the City God's records; ch. 7, on the scope, purpose and origin of Mengpo's work.
[5] Bhikkhu Anālayo, ‘Rebirth and the West,’ Insight Journal 45 (2019): 55–64, especially p. 58. The discussion concerns the early Buddhist teaching of not-self and continuity through causes and conditions. [Source 1](https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/rebirthwest.pdf)
[6] Yinlü Wuqing, vol. 1, chs. 15, 24 and 28, on ordinary life in the underworld and different outcomes after death. Hisao Inagaki with Harold Stewart, trans., The Three Pure Land Sutras, revised second edition (2003), The Smaller Sutra, section 5, p. 93, on nonretrogression in Amitabha's land. [Source 1](https://www.bdk.or.jp/document/dgtl-dl/dBET_ThreePureLandSutras_2003.pdf) [Source 2](https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T0366)
[7] Yinlü Wuqing, vol. 2, ch. 19, links vows and conduct across successive lives and distinguishes good rebirth from release beyond the Three Realms.