Navigating the Skies of Karma

These short wisdom teachings are a part of our daily meditation. Join us online or in-person for meditation and hear them first hand…

If you're going to fly a plane, you check the prevailing conditions first. You see which way the wind is blowing, what visibility looks like. You take off with full awareness of the conditions around you.

It's funny—when it comes to living our lives, we often don’t take the same care. We don’t always examine our karmic circumstances as they are. Instead, we approach them from how we wish they were.

Imagine a pilot who steps onto the runway and says, “Looks sunny enough—let’s fly as high as we want today,” despite a storm brewing on the horizon. It would be folly. The plane would crash.

In the same way, we must be mindful of the conditions we find ourselves in. Not resisting them, not wishing them away, but seeing them clearly. If we want to navigate life skillfully, we need to learn to work with circumstances as they are—not as we wish them to be.

Far from leading to despair, this approach allows us to take flight. It opens the way to meeting life directly, transforming difficulty into presence, and presence into action.

So today, take a look at what you'd rather not see. Work with it, not against it. That’s the way of practice.