Gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us to realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us.

The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstaticâ but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.

We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again - and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.

Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the West, a rare combination of mystic, poet, scholar, and activist. His luminous presence and the simple, compassionate clarity of his writings have touched countless lives.

The web of life both cradles us and calls us to weave it further.

The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.

It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to evolutionary and psychological transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells.