Summer Break Thoughts: The Nature of Work

Our study group is on break for July and August 2026 but I thought I’d write a post loosely related to our studies. Although many Buddhists condemn people for doing jobs that go against Right Livelihood, it is not a position we take in Jodo Shinshu. For example, on X/Twitter a researcher I knew disagreed with my saying, “all work is defiled,” because he believed some jobs, like working for a weapons manufacturer are directly related to killing people (this was during a discussion when a widely followed transgender rights commentator was exposed as a Lockheed Martin employee). Although we may think we have a lot of free will in choosing how we make money to support ourselves, I think causes and conditions still steer us into work that we or others would think we shouldn’t be doing because of the harm it causes to some living beings. As Yuien-bo quotes Shinran in Chapter 13 of Tannisho:

 

There is no difference between people who make their living by casting nets and fishing in the seas and rivers, or who hunt birds and wild animals in the plains and mountains; and people who engage in commerce or cultivate the fields and rice paddies.

-- Translation by Nobuo Haneda, p. 14 in Strategies for Modern Living by Alfred Bloom (Berkeley: Numata Center, 1992)

 

Shinran is telling Yuien-bo this after making the point that the only thing not making Yuien-bo a murderer is his karma (cumulative causes and conditions) and not his self-powered good conscience. Shinran saw that it was nonsense to condemn working people as precept-breakers when for most of them, whether they were thieves, prostitutes, farmers or merchants, their work was not something they freely chose, but what they ended up having to do due to the circumstances of their lives.

 

Already in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, peoples’ lives were controlled by the market economy. Way before capitalism, the elites used markets to profit from the products made by the labor of the non-elites. There have been societies where people did not have to work all day, every day in order to sustain the community – the kingdom of Hawai’i was a recent example, where before the plantations, people spent most of their time enjoying cultural activities. In societies where the great majority of people worked themselves to death were organized with a ruling class that did not have to do much labor except the occasional battle with other kingdoms. I think of those lords and ladies of ancient Japan wearing several layers of heavy robes because they seldom had to be on their feet and use their arms except for writing poetry.

 

It pains me every time I hear people lauding their parents and immigrant grandparents for being hard workers. Our ancestors’ “hard work” was not something they did to be virtuous but it was what they had to do, like everyone else who is not an elite. Getting “ahead” by hard work is a delusion – those who become rich and powerful are not that hard working, but they had connections, privilege, and training in being immoral (i.e., not caring about harming others).

 

I’ve been watching movies and thinking about how they show the nature of work in our present day. Korean movies are especially keen at pointing out the increasing economic hardships for generations now and in the near future. “Parasite” (2019) shows how the people who are struggling to survive, have to do work that supports the elites who hardly do any labor. A movie like “Burning” (2018) shows young people burdened with intergenerational debt (I suspect Japan impoverished much of Korea during its occupation), the men having to take on gig labor jobs and the women trying to stay young looking to get jobs as sexy attractions. The villain played by Steven Yeun represents the elites who live luxuriously without laboring and treat everyone, particularly women, as disposable. The recent “No Other Choice” (2025) shows how very skilled and knowledgeable people become ruthless competitors for the dwindling available jobs as artificial intelligence and technology take over the labor that humans used to do. Even the lightweight stories such as “Champion” (2018) and “Sweet and Sour” (2021) show the toll taken on ordinary people, compelled to work hard for very little compensation.

 

                                                            [from "Parasite"]

On the other hand, American movies ignore the problem of structural inequality with so many rags-to-riches stories, holding up the myth of meritocracy. We Americans only have to look at who is in charge in our government and the business world to see that these men did not get on top by any merits (such as intelligence, skills, education). One example in the movies we see of this is “Nine to Five” (1980) where the three women get enough clout to make conditions a little more tolerable for their fellow workers but the profits still go to the nincompoop who owns the company.

 

Maybe as Buddhists we should contemplate “seizing the means of production” as a way to ease the suffering of those forced to work harder and harder so a handful of billionaires can become richer. Maybe we should advocate for policies that treat food, housing and healthcare as benefits given to everyone and not just to those who “deserve” it according to the current administration’s criteria of race, gender identity, able-bodiedness, and religious affiliation. For us to talk about Great Compassion but have no vision of what it is makes the calling of Namu Amida Butsu rather empty. If we are based in hongan no butchi, the Buddha-ground of the innermost aspiration, it does not matter what the authoritarians label us.

 

Study Group June 2026 Session

 

On June 21 we had our sixth session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). We looked at the section CWS 502-3 where Shinran comments on the inscription accompanying a portrait of Tanluan.

 

It seems all Shinran is doing is explaining what the Chinese biographer wrote about Tanluan. Those details of Tanluan’s life are familiar to those of you who regularly read and study Shoshinge. But I wondered why Shinran doesn’t go into the teachings of Tanluan in this passage but only shows Tanluan was brilliant, learned and highly respected.

 

My feeling is he has already spoken much to his audience about Tanluan. Maybe it was practically all the time that Shinran says what he’s telling them is what he learned from Tanluan’s explanation of Vasubandhu’s commentary on the Larger Sutra.

 

As I mentioned last month, at the Higashi Honganji ministers study retreat in Los Angeles, Prof. Takami Inoue spoke about Vasubandhu and Tanluan. Vasubandhu brought out the metaphorical meanings of the Larger Sutra and Tanluan continued that discussion of the Pure Land symbolizing the world of equality and liberation. Inoue-sensei defined “shinjin” as the awareness of not just being embraced by Great Compassion but experiencing our participation in bringing that compassion to the world. He showed that the message Shinran took away from Tanluan’s analysis is that all are included in the Pure Land – that there is no condition you have to meet to qualify for liberation. It was this reassurance of total inclusiveness that probably took Tanluan out of the physical and mental illness he had hoped Taoism would cure.

 

The “adornments of the Pure Land” are commonly evoked for explaining the fancy gold ornaments around the temple altar and even includes the ministers in their shiny robes. But as I learned from the minister study retreats, the Pure Land adornments described in the sutras are symbols for virtues - “wonderful spiritual qualities” as in Michael Conway’s translation. The “transference of merit” is actually our witnessing and being guided by the virtues of those before and around us. I mentioned that I’ve experienced this in temple sanghas but also in reading accounts such as the Thomas Merton book I’m reading now where he describes the various people who helped him in his somewhat wayward youth.

 

 

[Great Compassion at the Northwest Detention Center]

In these blog posts I try to highlight people with wonderful spiritual qualities, those who are doing the shinjin actions of compassion. Due to the repressive law enforcement system going after so-called “terrorists,” I decided not to name her because she’s not a public figure. I’ll call her “Daihi” for now. I first became acquainted with her online as she was working to get Japanese Americans to support the Black reparations campaign. Then I met her in person at the Liberation Obon in September 2024 at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. As part of the group La Resistencia, she is constantly calling attention to the abusive conditions at that GEO Group facility. She is often part of the daily vigil there. Her activism reminds us that all these struggles are interrelated. The descendants of the enslaved and those severely discriminated against should get reparations for the loss of generational wealth and how those historical factors still put many at a disadvantage now. Those in the detention centers are going through a painful disruption in their lives caused by the same racism and hate that drove the system of slavery. Besides the many incarcerated people of Latin American heritage, there are many abducted by ICE and CBP for being outspoken about the genocide in Gaza. All of these injustices and more are what Shinran sees coming from our calculating minds of discrimination. What Shinran received from the Pure Land sutras and the analysis of Vasubandhu and Tanluan is that spiritual awakening is not only for those who meet certain criteria but it is embracing all of us. Great Compassion “Daihi” reminds us that all of us are together in the Pure Land and we must confront and try to heal any suffering caused to one another.

Study Group May 2026 Session

 

On May 17 we had our fifth session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). We looked at the section CWS 500-502 where Shinran comments on an inscription of verses by Vasubandhu.

 

At the beginning of May I was in Los Angeles to attend the Higashi Honganji ministers’ study seminar followed the next day by a retreat for the lay members of the North America District temples. The guest speaker for both events was Rev. Takami Inoue, currently bishop of the Hawaii District, an assignment he took after retiring from Otani University. For the ministers’ seminar, he spoke about Shinran’s interpretation of Vasubandhu and Tanluan and on the handout he shared a picture of the scroll Shinran writes about in our text. It is the ten-character Name: ki-myo (Namu) jin-jip-po mu-ge ko (Amida) nyo-rai (Butsu), an alternative expression of the nembutsu that Shinran favored because it gave the literal translation of “Amida” as “unhindered light filling the ten directions.” At the top of the scroll is a passage from the Larger Sutra and on the bottom are the verses he comments on in our text. He also had those same verses inscribed on a scroll with his portrait.

 

The framing I wanted to present is that Shinran wanted the followers in the eastern Japan region to know that the Pure Land sutras are interpreted as metaphors for living our lives in the present, not a literal description of a magical world one enters after death. Vasubandhu represents this tradition of interpreting the sutras in this way and Tanluan further developed his presentation. So I mentioned that at the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies, I heard that the monks from Taiwan agreed with a lot of what Shinran said because they, too, studied Vasubandhu and Tanluan. But they said they couldn’t present that interpretation to their members because those people expect to only hear about the heavenly Pure Land of the afterlife.

 

Shinran probably saw that within Honen’s growing following, there were some people fixating on the literal descriptions of the Pure Land rather than listening to Honen speaking of the metaphorical meaning. Shinran definitely did not want the growing sanghas in eastern Japan to get stuck there, so he wanted them to learn from Vasubandhu and Tanluan. But even now in Jodo Shinshu temples, people only know about the Pure Land descriptions in the sutras and not about how Vasubandhu and Tanluan pointed to their symbolism.

 

As Bishop Inoue emphasized in reading Vasubandhu, the metaphors are pointing to the heart of great compassion, the compassion that embraces all beings and works through us. So as in the last verse, Vasubandhu says it is Amida’s deep aspiration that “quickly brings to fullness and perfection the great treasure ocean of virtues.” I said that in Buddhism, “virtues” doesn’t refer to Puritan living but to those thoughts, words and actions that eases the suffering of others and brings them to fulfillment. For those of us at temples, we see these virtues enacted by many of the older members – those who help and encourage others and make the Dharma accessible by keeping the temple a comfortable and welcoming place.

 

So by showing us the vision of what a free and equal society looks like, Jodo Shinshu can be an inspiration to those of us working for social justice. Our group member, Prof. Jeff Wilson, writes about this in this book Living Nembutsu and in this recent lecture he gave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pF1nHqDvQI

 

 

[from X/Twitter]

Although many of us are physically limited in what we can do to help others, one thing we can do to show support is make donations to those who are actively doing life enhancing work. As I mentioned in my turn leading the Refuge Circle for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship on March 25, the Sameer Project is a group worth following on social media. We see so many tragic images from Palestine, but the Sameer Project almost daily has videos of children enjoying art, crafts, games, singing, dancing and even what they consider the privilege of schoolwork. If you can like and share their posts and donate whatever you can from time to time, it shows your support and encouragement to them.

 

Study Group April 2026 Session

 

On April 19 we had our fourth session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). We looked at the section CWS 499-500 where Shinran comments on an inscription on a scroll which depicted Nagarjuna, the Dharma teacher which all Mahayana sects consider as their first “high-monk” (literal for kōsō since I want to avoid the term “patriarch”).

 

By highlighting this particular quote, Shinran is letting his audience know that the eminent teacher is advocating what they are already doing – being mindful of the support and virtues coming to them through the nembutsu. We and they don’t have to get into the complex philosophical concepts Nagarjuna is known for among Buddhist scholars and teachers in other sects. It is enough for us to enter the stage of definitely settled by entrusting ourselves to the power beyond our ego-selves.

 

And it is not Nagarjuna on a high perch looking down on poor incompetent people saying, “Your only hope is to do nembutsu because you don’t have the smarts and physical strength for elite practices.” Nagarjuna uses the first person singular “I” in his verse “I take refuge” just as in his Junirai, he repeatedly says “Therefore I bow down in respect to Amida.” Shinran wants us to know we are in the same definitely settled crowd as the great teachers.

 

I quibbled about CWS saying “the Buddha will appear” when it is tathagata, nyorai, “thusness coming.” We have the appearance of this thusness coming at us in our teachers, the texts, events and various living beings (such as the cats who appear on our Zoom call).

 

In our discussion about “entrusting,” a question was raised about how Shinran uses the term “doubt” in contrast to “trust.” I feel the English term is misleading because we use “doubt” in the sense of questioning the truth of something and this continual examination is what we do as Buddhists, especially questioning our own judgments. Shinran used the term gi, utagai, in the sense of being full of reliance on our own self-serving view as opposed to being aware of reality. One example is this gi Shinran says is when we believe in reward and punishment – “I should be rewarded and those other guys should be punished” – when the reality of unbounded compassion is that all beings are embraced, no matter how much we or they messed up.

 

 

[Screenshot of singing protesters in Japan]

 

I know I’m not the only one trying to keep my hopes up during this time of awful stuff going on in the world and all around us. I feel some inspiration from the social media reports of the huge crowds of protesters in the cities of Japan. They are spurred to protest their own government trying to be more militaristic, but in the protests there are also calls for “Free Palestine” and ‘”Stop the War with Iran.” The young folks have their chants and pop/rock music but at various locations I saw the middle aged and older people are singing the song “Do You Hear the People Singing?” from the musical Les Miserables. The Japanese version is based mainly on the English lyrics rather than the original French, but to me the lyrics sound more universal and relevant than the English version. I know after the “no kings” marches and other demonstrations, some critics say nothing changes from people singing and dancing, yet I think we need songs to remind us to fight for freedom and equality. Isn’t that what the nembutsu is calling us to do?

 

Study Group March 2026 Session

On March 29 we had our third session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). We looked at the section CWS 497-499 on Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāta (which after pronouncing the Sanskrit once, I only used the Japanese version Dai-seishi which is also easier to type). In many pictures and sculptures, Amida Buddha is depicted flanked by the two bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara (Jpn. Kannon) and Dai-seishi. And while Kannon is mentioned a ton of times in many sutras and commentaries, Dai-seishi is hardly referenced outside the inscription from the Suramgama Sutra on the scroll Shinran cites.

 

My theory for why Shinran wants to highlight Dai-seishi for his audience is to show Buddhism is about the powerful strength of wisdom and not just the warm fuzzy embrace of compassion.  For his fellow travelers on the Pure Land path, he wanted to let them know that there’s something strong and dynamic in their spiritual liberation despite how society demeans them as weak and passive. The Other Power symbolized by Amida expresses itself as both Kannon (unbounded Life) and Dai-seishi (infinite Light).

 

Shinran in his commentary brings the text from its general sense of extolling meditation (samadhi) to a specific exhortation for the vocal nembutsu. Where the text says awakening (satori) will naturally occur without depending on expedient means, Shinran says that with jinen (inevitability) other practices are not needed at all.

 

We discussed how many Jodo Shinshu ministers (especially the ones from Japan) talk of shinjin as something everyone can just jump into from square one and anyone who indulges in practices besides reciting nembutsu is suspected of being a self-power addict. In the section we read, it is clear that Shinran is not dismissing other practices as bad, but only pointing out that awakening can happen without depending on them. I can speak for the converts by saying I needed to do a lot of other practices in order to realize the efficacy of the nembutsu and my overestimation of my abilities.

 

We talked about how the phrase “Come as you are” can be misleading as a motto for Jodo Shinshu temples. It is meant to be welcoming, telling people there are no pre-requisites for becoming a member. But often it is interpreted as “I don’t need to do anything because Amida accepts me like I am, sitting on my hands and saying nothing.” But the motto comes from the White Path Parable when the traveler is told to “come immediately,” that is, get your rear in gear without overthinking about how to make yourself look good. It signifies a forward movement towards life itself, propelled by the wisdom that breaks through your preconceived notions. The nembutsu is a call to be engaged with reality, to participate in the working of hongan, the most basic aspiration to recognize all lives in one’s existence.

[photo from The Australian]

I wanted to highlight someone who is like Dai-seishi (“great arriving at strength”) and I thought of Susan Abulhawa, who I saw interviewed on the Bad Faith podcast of March 19 on YouTube. She was in the news because people were criticizing the New York City mayor’s wife for providing illustrations for a book to which Abulhawa contributed. The critics were concerned with Abulhawa’s statements criticizing Israel (calling its people “parasites” and various beasts) so the mayor spoke to distance himself and his wife from Abulhawa. On the Bad Faith podcast, Abulhawa spoke eloquently of why she uses those terms for people who do cruel things such as (what she witnessed as a child) making two little boys spit in each other’s mouths like a soccer match in order for a group of children to pass through a checkpoint. Her novel Mornings in Jenin describes the decades of violence and humiliations that the Palestinians have been subjected to.

 

Buddhism teaches us to respect all beings equally but that teaching also tells us to catch ourselves and others thinking, saying and doing things that do not recognize the dignity of all beings. Right now is not the time to only sit silently while children and adults throughout the world are being murdered and maimed by weapons and by deprivation. As individuals there is not much we can do alone but the nembutsu calls us into community and into the actions of wisdom and compassion.

Study Group February 2026 Session

On February 22 we had our second session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). Shinran’s notes begin with the three passages from the Larger Sutra that appeared on one scroll (CWS 493-497). And as I said last time, the Larger Sutra is the foundational text for Jodo Shinshu, but after watching Jim Pollard’s talk on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3uqmghr5es), it made me realize we need to read foundational texts (sutras and commentaries) because especially in the West, it’s too easy to make Buddhism into an ego-enhancing project. In Jim’s talk, Shinran could have gotten stuck in the first two gates of making oneself look good – the “ethical” phase of becoming a moral paragon or the “religious” phase of becoming a dedicated follower. But by reading the Larger Sutra with the commentaries of Vasubandhu and Tanluan, Shinran was reminded that Buddhism is the teaching of transcending the ego, of settling down to just being a foolish being in the embrace of the true wisdom and real compassion of unbounded Life and Light (the Wide-Vow gate).

 

We discussed two related concepts brought up in the Larger Sutra quotes: nonretrogression and jinen. Nonretrogression is a mouthful but I think in the Buddha’s time it resonated with people fearful of their next reincarnation, afraid any moral misstep could result in being reborn as an animal, hungry ghost or devil, or in the human realm as a poor, sick and/or ugly woman (male rebirth was considered a promotion). In Shinran’s time, people who worked for a living were told they were already condemned to hell for breaking the precepts that the aristocratic monks upheld by keeping their hands clean of doing labor and business transactions. For these people to hear from Honen and Shinran that there was no backsliding into the “unsaved” category due to any causes or circumstances affecting your thoughts and behavior was a big relief.

 

Prof. Jeff Wilson suggested “spiritual momentum” as a synonym for nonretrogression. That term captured the idea that we are receiving a wind at our backs to keep us going towards enlightenment no matter how unworthy we think we are. Another person suggested “gravity” which played on the idea of the settling feeling of falling back down to earth.

 

That sense of getting one’s feet back on the ground and out of the clouds of calculations relates to the concept of jinen, the ji “automatic,” nen “essence.” And it relates to the horizontal “crosswise” movement in the passages Shinran highlights as opposed to the usual way of thinking of spirituality as climbing up. Unfortunately in the main hall hondo in many temples, the ministers sit on a raised platform and some ministers speak and write from a lofty detached position talking down to the members sunk in their miseries. I mentioned Rev. Cyndi Yasaki’s article in Wheel of Dharma as a refreshing example of a minister relating the Dharma to her current personal experience of being pregnant.

 

[Screenshot of June Jordan in "A Place of Rage"]

These days I wish all religious people would be talking about solidarity with the actual people in our world who are experiencing hardships instead of making generalized statements of “all lives matter.” Recently I watched the short documentary “A Place of Rage” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEK7dlImtA) and I was impressed with the poet June Jordan, reading her poems and giving commentary. In the film twice she mentions her solidarity with the Palestinians which at that time (early 1990s) was not a common topic with Black activists. I read that she had to persuade some of her fellow activists to stop supporting Israel and to recognize the suffering of the Palestinians. The recently deceased Rev. Jesse Jackson was another Black activist who visibly supported the Palestinians and was unfairly labeled as an anti-Semite.

 

The plight of Palestinians is not unrelated to the current persecution of immigrants in the U.S. There is a close connection between the authoritarian forces in Israel, in the U.S. and all over the world, referred to as the “imperial boomerang” or recently in an article by Nikhil Pal Singh in Equator, it is called “homeland empire,” pointing out how the post-9/11 security measures are aimed at subjugating U.S. residents to the same oppression that our country imposes overseas. As Buddhists we already know about the interconnection of all lives, yet how come it is so difficult to get Japanese American Jodo Shinshu followers to have empathy for the people being hounded by ICE/CBP? Talk to the people in Minnesota who are going out of their way to help their neighbors getting groceries and providing lookouts at schools and daycare centers. To me, they are the ones moved by “the karmic power of the great Vow.”

 

Study Group January 2026 Session

 

On January 25 we started our reading and discussion of “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). From the time of our last meeting in December finishing up “Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone,’” many horrendous things have happened in our country. In the state of Minnesota there was a surge of forces of the Department of Homeland Security: Customs Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). Two people were shot and killed in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and with the news of those murders, it was learned an off-duty ICE agent had shot and killed a man in Los Angeles, Keith Porter, Jr. on New Year’s Eve. Besides those murders, we have seen numerous photos and videos of people being dragged from their cars, students and teachers being attacked with tear gas at schools, observers and protesters hit with pepper spray and rubber bullets.

 

These days with all the depressing news, I find it hard to get started doing anything “serious” but thankfully, I have those of you in this study group to support me in delving into the words of Shinran. We do this study not as an escape from reality but in order for us to make sense of, survive and be inspired to resist the current surge of authoritarianism. Shinran is speaking to the people of his time dealing with the chaos of a violently repressive ruling class along with natural disasters, sharing with them the wisdom from past teachers who also had to deal with difficult times and personal circumstances.

 

Back in Shinran’s time, they didn’t have videos and photos but Buddhism was conveyed to the common people in visual form using hanging scrolls. The scrolls which Jodo Shinshu followers would display at their gatherings usually depicted either a Buddhist figure  (shin-zō, “true image”) or a form of the nembutsu (son-gō, “revered Name”). There would be passages (mei-mon, “impressive words”) written or pasted around the main image and Shinran compiled this work to explain in vernacular Japanese those significant passages which were written in Chinese.

 

Shinran begins with three passages from the Larger Sutra that appeared on one scroll (CWS 493-497). The Larger Sutra is the basis of Jodo Shinshu for Shinran because the story of Dharmakara is what gives the nembutsu meaning. The first passage noted is the 18^th vow and we discussed shingyō, here translated as “entrusting.” The shin part is to be aware, to accept what is true, while the gyō part indicates joy and aspiration (see CWS 94), so “entrusting” doesn’t quite capture what Shinran sees in the 18^th vow.

 

The second passage comes from the verse section of the second half of the Larger Sutra, called Tōbō-ge by Higashi and Ōgon-ge by Nishi. The two verse sections in the first half of the Larger Sutra are often chanted at Shin temples but not this third verse section. We discussed the phrase “coming about of itself” as related to jinen, usually translated as “naturalness.” I said it didn’t mean “natural” as in the “natural world” but more like coming about inevitably without calculation like how each of us can say somehow we’ve reached the stage of nonretrogression, having encountered the teachings that changed how we live and see the world.

 

I meant to save the third passage for the next session but I realized later that I totally skipped over page 495 when we were talking about jinen. So we look at the commentary on page 495 about the second passage and will pick up the third passage next time.

 

 

It is depressing to hear that over 73,000 people are presently being held in U.S. detention centers. To see that aerial photo of adults and children yelling for “libertad” makes me wish the camera-drones could have bombed down the walls and fences so those prisoners could escape. I think many of us hate seeing people in cages, especially those of us whose parents and grandparents had to spend years behind barbed wire. What we call the Pure Land has to be a vision of complete freedom for all beings – there is no justification for placing anyone in a cell, camp or corral, not in the U.S. or anywhere else. In the nembutsu if we can hear those cries of “libertad” we can be drawn into participating in the liberating power of hongan, the universal aspiration for freedom and equality.