Please call me by my true names

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and a peace activist, once wrote that when we come into contact with another person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept.

In other words, our love should not be contingent upon the other person being lovable.

On the topic on compassion, he has written a particularly acclaimed poem which has pulled the heartstring of many around the world. When I first read this poem in an email sent to me by The Queen, I thought it was, well, just a lovely poem. It was insightful and moving but sadly, I did not truly comprehend the real message behind his words.

By chance today, I came across a discussion he wrote about this poem and found out about his work in Plum Village, a monastery and Buddhism practice centre in France, where he receives daily letters from refugee camps all around South East Asia on the pain and sufferings of migrants in exile.

He described a letter he received one day about a young girl on a small refugee boat who was raped by a Thai pirate. She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself after the ordeal. He wrote:

“When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I am now the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I cannot condemn myself so easily. In my meditation, I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we ... do not do something about the situation, in twenty-five years a number of them will become sea pirates...... If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, you shoot all of us, because all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.“

“After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is "Please Call Me By My True Names," because I have so many names. When I hear one of these names, I have to say, "Yes."

Please Call Me By My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope, the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.