The dewdrop is a small thing,
But it holds the entire universe.
– Dogen

The false self drifts through dreams, lost, lonely, and confused. Its illusory life is under constant threat—psychologically, physically, and most of all, by the True Self, which would reveal its unreality.

Beset by fear and suffering, it is natural for us to seek relief. Everyone longs for peace and happiness. But answers found within a dream only reinforce the seeming reality of the dream.

When we begin to realize there is no hope of lasting peace within a dream of separation, there remains only one option: for real hope, we must look outside the dream.

This is Daily Zen. Its carefully curated poems and teachings offer a path that would lead us out of the illusion of separation and beyond the suffering of the false self. This path has been made soft by those who have walked it before us and by those who walk it beside us now.

I particularly enjoy the short poems—those that fully encompass the metaphysical implications, the paradoxes, and the practice of the pathless path.

These simple verses are the blossoms of mindfulness, reminding us that the phenomenal universe is an illusion, and, paradoxically, that if we observe the illusory thoughts we have made real, the false self we have made real, the false world we have made real, we can glimpse the Beauty of Reality even now, within illusions, even as we are being led beyond them, even as we are awakening from them.

Daily Zen is like a morning dewdrop along the path, among the sunlit blossoms: the essence that offers us Everything.

Wishing all readers peace,

Jamie R.