Noise

The world is loud. Not just outside: sirens, engines, headlines, notifications. Inside too. Your thoughts. Your alerts. Your need to stay informed, relevant, safe, seen. It never stops. Noise isn’t new. But now it follows you home. It vibrates in your pocket. It calls out while you eat. It interrupts your breath. It fills your silence before you even notice you had any. So where does Zen belong now? Right here. In the noise. Zen is not the art of escape. It is the practice of presence. Not silence. Stillness. You don’t need to move to a cabin. You don’t need to delete your accounts. You don’t need to fear the world. You need to learn how to sit with it. In it. Through it. Noise comes. You breathe. Noise rises. You stay. You don’t run from the noise. You don’t fight the noise. You don’t become the noise. You witness. There is stillness deeper than silence. That’s what Zen reveals. The hum beneath the hum. The quiet that isn’t the absence of sound,  But the presence of attention. You can practice with headphones on. You can practice at the grocery store. You can practice in traffic, in grief, in group chats. The path doesn’t require quiet. It requires presence. And presence is still possible. You will be pulled. That’s expected. The scroll will tempt you. The feed will trigger you. The story will carry you off. That’s not failure. That’s practice. Notice. Return. Come back to the body. Come back to the breath. Come back to the only thing that’s ever actually happening: now. This age may be noisy, but your mind doesn’t have to be. Let the world make its sound. Let the notifications ding. Let the chatter swirl around you. And you? Sit like a mountain. Breathe like a tide. Be the quiet that listens. Zen doesn’t need a quiet world. It just needs your full attention.