One of the most famous poems by one of the most respected Buddhist scholars, Thich Nat Han, expresses the capacity for compassion and acceptance better than any poem I know. It is printed in The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh and is called "Please Call Me By My True Names." Needless to say, like many poems, it is coherent only if interpreted metaphorically, so I invite you to interpret it metaphorically rather than dismissing it as mere mysticism. Here is the poem:

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 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 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 can be left open, the door of compassion. slowly in a forced-labor camp.

Notice what this poem is saying. He, the writer, is asking us, the reader, to recognize and accept the fact that he, the writer, is capable of both good and evil, joy and suffering, so that he can more easily recognize and accept his own humanity. He asks that we have compassion for him so that he may have compassion for himself and others. He even recognizes and accepts the fact that he could rape a twelve-year-old girl like a sea pirate if, like this pirate, he were so hurt-like the hurt wolf-that his heart were not capable of seeing and loving. Only with self-acceptance and compassion towards himself-which he can learn from others-will he be capable of acting morally towards himself and others.