Please call me by my true names...

Men carry babies through the rubble of buildings destroyed in a reported government air strike in Syria. Photo credit: BBC.com

I've shared this poem by Thich Nhat Hanh in a couple of my classes... and just a few days ago at a yoga therapy training in which I had the good fortune to be a student, someone in class asked how do we bear the incredulous suffering of people afflicted by war, poverty, diseases and unimaginable circumstances which are just too overwhelming for our heart to bear and mind to comprehend... how do not turn away from the pain...

​How do we keep coming back to seeing all beings as the same - the same divine energy in a million trillion zillion forms. How do we keep our hearts from closing, our minds from contracting? How do we keep coming back to recognise that beneath the shattered dreams, the broken hearts, the the seething angst, the steel cold fear, ... is our capacity to keep coming back home - to empathy, to compassion, to deep listening, to unconditional love - hidden in the most unspeakable, horrid shells, waiting to be cracked open? 

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 a 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 a 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 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 can see that 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