Call Me By My True Names
May 21st, 2007
Most people think it is impossible to change our government, yet they fail to remember that they are the government. The government is simply an extension of the people, serving the implicit and explicit wishes of the populace. Our daily lives have the most to do with the situation of the world. If we can change our daily lives, we can change our governments and we can change the world.
Nourish awareness and compassion will follow.
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, whose wings are still fragile,
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,
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,
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 but 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.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, 1976
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:29 am
You are right that all the people are the government but only if we can all act together and separately..
May 26th, 2007 at 9:35 am
“we can change our governments and we can change the world”
Mostly now a days, its “I”
by the way, nice poetry.
December 11th, 2007 at 8:10 am
The American system of government that once was a government of the people has all but perished over the past decade under the Bush administration. The Constitution has been replaced by a perverse corporate agenda. Lawmakers and political figureheads have abandoned the basic principles of a free society. They have established by policy a two tiered sytem of governance where one set of rules apply to the workers and consumer class while other laws do nothing but agressively protect corporate interests an corrupt politicians. Our weak kneed politicians and government officials could care less about America, they intend to create a one world government and abolish it any way. In the mean time all their Wall Street buddies are raping the system causing this nation to economically implode.