noun
the dusty world; earthly affairs; the madding crowd
Literary term for the mundane, troublesome world of everyday life and society, often with a nuance of wanting to escape it.
彼は俗塵を避けて山奥に住んでいる。
He lives deep in the mountains, away from the dusty world.
都会の俗塵に疲れて、田舎へ引っ越した。
Tired of the madding crowd of the city, I moved to the countryside.
Compound of 俗 (ぞく, 'worldly, vulgar') and 塵 (じん, 'dust, dirt'), literally 'worldly dust'. The term evokes the idea of the mundane world as something dusty and impure, a common metaphor in East Asian literary traditions.