In monasteries, the bell rings.
When you hear it, you pause.
You come back to yourself.
Back to breath.
Back to presence.
The bell is not a command.
It’s an invitation.
You return, not because you’re failing, but because you’ve wandered—as we all do.
Out here, in the West, we don’t live in monasteries.
We live in noise.
We carry bells in our pockets.
We call them phones.
They ring.
They ding.
They vibrate.
They pull us outward.
And we react.
We rush.
We answer.
Not because we’re weak, but because we’re conditioned to chase every sound.
But what if the chime is still the bell?
What if every notification was a call to return?
Not to your inbox.
Not to your feed.
But to your breath.
You hear the ding.
You feel the pull.
You pause.
You smile.
You say, silently, thank you.
Thank you for the reminder: I am here.
Thank you for the bell: I have returned.
The world will keep ringing.
The calls will come.
The texts will pile up.
The notifications will multiply.
Let them.
You don’t need to banish them.
You don’t need to fear them.
You don’t need to fight the noise.
You transform it.
You let the chime become your practice.
Every ding becomes a bell.
Every buzz becomes a breath.
I will never tell you to put your phone away.
I will not ask you to reject the world to find your practice.
Instead, I invite you to lean into it.
To meet the noise with presence.
To meet the interruption with stillness.
You will be pulled.
You will be distracted.
That’s not failure.
That’s practice.
The bell rings.
You return.
The chime dings.
You come home.
Not because you controlled your mind.
Not because you conquered your cravings.
But because you allowed the world itself to guide you back.
Presence isn’t fragile.
It doesn’t depend on silence.
It depends on return.
The ding becomes the Dharma.
The chime becomes the teacher.
Tech is here.
AI is here.
And Zen teaches one thing:
be here.
Every sound is a chance to wake up.
Every ring is a whisper: You are here.
Enlightened Life Fellowship 