David Vollbracht

As a traveling consultant, my livelihood requires me to make two flights a week so that I can be at the client site during the week and home on the weekends. This has taught me that airports and flights are places of great suffering. The stress that travel puts on our minds and bodies often leads us to seek refuge in egoistic thoughts: “I need to get up as soon as the fasten seat belts sign is off so I can get off this plane quickly”, “This person next to me is cramping my space”, “I wish the person in front of me wouldn’t lean their seat back.” If we dwell in these thoughts, travel will be a miserable experience. If we are practicing, however, travel presents a wonderful challenge for moving beyond our ego.

I’ve found the Giving and Taking Meditation to be an effective method for letting go of egoistic thoughts, and travel is a fertile ground for practicing it. Having suffered through many flight experiences, the suffering of those around me feels quite familiar. Drawing in their suffering as part of the meditation a remarkably concrete experience. When I am caught up in travel-related egoistic thoughts, the meditation is a reminder that all those around me are sharing the same experience with the same frustrations. We are all sitting in the same cramped space with a goal of getting someplace other than where we are now. By taking their suffering and letting it soften my heart, my trip becomes more peaceful and – I hope – I can do something to make someone else’s trip just a little more enjoyable.

Next time you travel, try taking a minute to think about all the others around you who are in the same boat you are. Really try to understand what particular travel suffering they are undergoing. Use that understanding to let go of your own ego and be a beacon of peace and joy for those around you stuck in the difficulties of air travel.