Please Call Me By My True Names...
Don't say that I will depart tomorrow...
Even today I am still arriving...
Look deeply: Every second I am arriving...
....to be a bud on a spring branch
To be a tiny bird with still fragile wings...
...learning to sing in my new nest
To be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower...
To be a jewel hiding itself in a stone...
I still arrive in order to laugh...
...and to cry...
...to fear....
...and to hope....
The rhythm of my heart...
...is the birth...
...and death...
...of all that is alive...
I am a mayfly...
...metamorphosing on the surface of the river
And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly...
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond...
...and I am the grass snake that silently 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 in the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate
I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable...
...of seeing...
...and loving... 0:02:16.033,0:02:16.000 I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable...
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 all over the earth...
My pain is like a river of tears...
...so vast it fills the four oceans...
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear...
...all my cries...
...and laughter at once...
...so I see my joy...
...and pain...
...are one
Please call me by my true names so I can wake up...
...and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion...
Thich Nhat Hanh