Considering that Merton died in 1968, these words have even more weight in the sense that the level of semi-attention and noise back then was tiny in comparison to what we experience now.
Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semiattention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time. This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half-diluted: we are not quite ‘thinking,’ not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. We are not fully present and not entirely absent; not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available. It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are ‘part of’ something – although we are not quite able to define what that something is – and probably wouldn’t want to define it even if we could. We just float along in the general noise. Resigned and indifferent, we share semiconsciously in the mindless mind of Muzak and radio commercials which passes for ‘reality.’
Thomas Merton, Essential Writings
Whatever the scenery the practice is the same. Our practice is to face everything life is, and everything life isn’t. Everything we think and feel and everything we don’t. Wall gazing is a very thorough practice in facing the fleetingness of things, and not getting trapped in momentary apparitions. All apparitions, as it turns out, are momenttary.When your eyes are open and you are intimately engaged with what appears in front of you, it’s hard to stay bored because nothing stays one way for long. 
