The Real World Is the Temple

I’ve never been good at pretending I live on a mountaintop.

I practice Zen in the middle of real life, grocery lists, grief, group chats, deadlines. Sometimes I’m sitting on a cushion. More often I’m breathing through traffic. Holding a sick dog. Crying in the car outside a Walgreens.

That’s where my Zen happens.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking that was a problem.

Applied Zen is about practicing where you are.

Not where it’s quiet.

Not where it’s aesthetic.

Here.

Right here, where your phone won’t stop buzzing.

Where your kid needs something.

Where the dishes aren’t done.

Where your past is still echoing through your nervous system and your future feels like static.

This is your temple.

Zen doesn’t need incense to be sacred.

It doesn’t need soft music or white robes or a bamboo forest.

It needs presence, and presence doesn’t care where you are.

Some of the deepest peace I’ve ever felt happened while standing in line at the DMV.

Not because the setting was peaceful, but because I was.

Because I stopped fighting the moment.

Stopped resisting where I was.

And just breathed into the truth of this is it.

That’s the core of Applied Zen: your life is the practice.

Folding laundry can be a form of prayer.

Brushing your teeth can be a ritual of return.

Scrolling your phone with awareness can be a kind of koan, what am I seeking? What am I avoiding? What’s alive in me right now?

You don’t have to leave the world to find peace.

You just have to stop trying to escape the now.

The real world is the temple.

Not because it’s perfect.

Because it’s real.

And Zen doesn’t live in theory.

It lives in reality.

Messy. Mundane. Sacred.

So bow to your inbox.

Bow to your neighbor’s barking dog.

Bow to the moment exactly as it is.

Because this, yes, this, is where practice begins.