How much of your life is truly in your hands?
At first, the answer may seem obvious. You choose your work, your relationships, your habits, and your responses. But look more closely. Can you control every person you meet, every opportunity that appears, every illness, loss, success, or unexpected turn?
In a video conversation about the human journey, a Buddhist teacher offers a humbling answer: perhaps only 20 percent is in our hands. Perhaps even 10 percent. The remaining 80 or 90 percent is shaped by what Buddhist teachings describe as karmic consequences. The results of seeds sown through past actions.
This is not quite the same as destiny. Destiny suggests a fixed script, as though your life has already been written and you are merely reading the lines. Karma, as presented in this Buddhist tantra and dharma teaching, is more like a field containing many seeds. Some seeds have come from the past. What you do now helps determine which ones receive water.
That small area of influence may be limited, but it is powerful.
Karma is not a sentence. It is a pattern of consequences.
The teacher’s central analogy is simple: across many lives, we sow many kinds of seeds.
Some are beneficial seeds: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom. Others arise from harmful conduct, resentment, carelessness, cruelty, or confusion.
In this life, we continue participating in the process. When we act with care, we are like someone watering the wholesome seeds while placing a heavy stone over the harmful ones. We encourage some tendencies and discourage others.
But many people do the opposite. They place a stone over their good seeds and keep watering the difficult ones.
How does that happen?
Perhaps someone has a natural capacity for peace, but continually feeds anger. Perhaps a person has meaningful friendships available, but responds to every challenge with suspicion. Perhaps they have the opportunity to act generously, but remain trapped in fear of not having enough.
The seed analogy invites a practical question:
What are you watering through your repeated attention and conduct?
You do not need to answer with shame. The purpose is not to condemn yourself for having difficult tendencies. The purpose is to notice them clearly enough that you can stop helping them grow.
Why do some harmful people seem to succeed?
One of the most unsettling parts of the teaching concerns people who behave badly yet appear to enjoy extraordinary success.
Why does someone who acts selfishly seem to receive wealth, recognition, influence, or comfort? Why does it sometimes look as though they are getting away with everything?
The explanation offered in the video is that some positive seeds from a past life may already have sprouted. They are no longer small seeds hidden beneath the soil. They have become a full-grown tree, already flowering or bearing fruit.
Once a tree has matured, you cannot simply wish it back into a seed.
In the same way, a person may be experiencing the results of previous generosity, discipline, patience, or diligence, even while creating new harmful consequences through present conduct. Their current success does not mean their actions are harmless. It may simply mean that an earlier harvest is still arriving.
This perspective also changes how we understand our own lives. A difficult season does not necessarily mean that every part of us is failing. A painful consequence may be one part of a much larger field, containing both seeds that are flowering and seeds that have not yet been touched.
The important question is not, “Why is this happening to me?” alone.
It is also:
Given what is happening, what will I cultivate next?
Where is freedom when so much is conditioned?
The teacher uses everyday examples to question our idea of freedom.
When you inhale, you must eventually exhale. When you close your eyes, you open them again. When you are hungry, you seek food. When you overeat, your body responds. When you are exhausted, you sleep; when you oversleep, you may wake feeling heavy and tired.
Even social behavior is shaped by conditions. Someone says hello. You could ignore them, but perhaps it feels morally uncomfortable. So you answer.
How much of what we call “choice” is actually reaction?
This does not mean that human beings have no responsibility or possibility. It means that freedom may be much smaller and subtler than we imagine. We are influenced by the body, past habits, emotions, social expectations, and karmic patterns.
Yet within that complexity, there is still a space.
Meditation helps us discover it.
When you meditate, you begin to notice reactions before they become speech or action. You may feel anger without immediately expressing it. You may notice fear without allowing it to make every decision. You may recognize a painful thought without treating it as an absolute truth.
The shift is gentle but profound:
You stop reacting automatically and begin responding with greater clarity and calmness.
Cover the soles of your feet
The teacher shares a memorable image: would it be easier to cover the entire world with cloth so you can walk barefoot, or to cover only the soles of your feet?
Clearly, protecting the soles of your feet is easier.
You do not need to change the entire world before you can move through it. You strengthen yourself. You develop steadiness. You learn not to respond to every small disturbance as though it were an emergency.
This does not mean becoming passive or tolerating harm. It means learning the difference between wise action and reflexive reaction.
Someone criticizes you. The criticism may be unfair. Your body may tense. Anger may appear. None of that makes you a bad practitioner. The practice begins when you notice what is happening and create a pause before adding another layer of harm.
What would it mean to cover the soles of your feet today?
Perhaps it means taking three breaths before answering a difficult message. Perhaps it means allowing a thought to pass without repeating it for an hour. Perhaps it means speaking firmly without trying to injure the other person.
Small choices matter because they become repeated choices. Repeated choices become tendencies. Tendencies influence the next moment.
That is how a small area of freedom begins to reshape the field.
Difficult experiences can sharpen you
The teacher compares difficult experience to the grinding of a knife.
A knife becomes sharper through friction. The process is not comfortable for the knife, at least metaphorically. It is worn against a rough surface again and again. Yet the very process that seems exhausting also gives it a clearer edge.
Some experiences in life may function in a similar way. This does not mean every painful event should be called good, or that suffering should be romanticized. It does not mean that people who experience hardship deserve it. The teaching is more intimate than that: when difficulty arrives, you can sometimes use it as education.
You may learn patience because circumstances refuse to move quickly. You may discover courage because avoidance no longer works. You may become more compassionate because you have known confusion yourself.
Try asking:
- What is this experience revealing about my habits?
- What reaction am I repeatedly strengthening?
- What quality would help me meet this with more wisdom?
- Can I respond without adding unnecessary suffering?
Meditation, ethical conduct, and honest self-observation help turn friction into refinement.
Individual karma and collective karma
The teaching also distinguishes between individual and collective karma.
When a flood affects many people, the shared suffering may be described as collective karma. Yet individuals experience the event differently. Some escape. Some are injured. Some lose their homes. Some may be affected in ways others never see.
This distinction encourages humility. We should be cautious about explaining another person’s suffering as though we know exactly why it happened. Karma is not an excuse to blame people for illness, poverty, violence, disaster, or loss.
The teaching asks us to look at patterns, but it does not give us permission to judge someone else’s entire life from the outside.
In fact, the deeper practice is to look at our own engagement: how we speak, what we repeat, what we encourage in the mind, and whether our actions reduce or increase suffering around us.
How things appear is not always how they are
A confused mind can make appearances feel completely real.
A passing emotion may appear to be an unchangeable fact. A fearful thought may appear to be a prophecy. A difficult person may appear to be nothing more than an enemy. A temporary circumstance may appear to define your entire life.
The video describes two modes: how phenomena appear and how they actually exist.
The distance between those two is where contemplation begins.
Can you observe an emotion without becoming the emotion? Can you recognize that your interpretation is shaped by history, expectation, and habit? Can you remain curious when certainty feels easier?
This is not an invitation to deny reality. It is an invitation to see more carefully.
Your present deeds are your future direction
A Tibetan saying shared in the video offers a practical reflection:
“If you want to know what you have done in your past life until now, look at your present state. If you want to know where you will end up in the future, look at your present deeds.”
The teaching connects present qualities with the six paramitas, or “going beyonds”: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom.
If you have resources, the teaching suggests looking toward generosity. If you are disciplined in how you care for your body and conduct, recognize that strength. If you have good friends, consider the patience and kindness that make connection possible. If you have the drive to do something positive, honor diligence. If you have even a little peace, value the meditation that supports it. If you have wisdom, remember that understanding is something to cultivate and share responsibly.
These reflections are not meant to become a scorecard. They are reminders that qualities grow through engagement.
Mental action matters, too. If you think badly of someone, they may never know. Yet the thought still affects you. It can create emotional restlessness, harden your character, and become easier to repeat the next time.
A thought is not the same as an action, and having a difficult thought does not make you evil. But continually entertaining resentment is like watering a seed.
Notice what you are feeding.
A grounded note on practice, work, and spiritual life
A teaching about karma and sadhana should not be used to make impulsive decisions about your career, finances, or responsibilities. Do not quit your job or abandon important commitments based on a spiritual idea, a powerful meditation experience, or a single blog post. Let insight mature through time, discernment, practical planning, and trustworthy guidance.
Spiritual practice is meant to deepen your relationship with life, not encourage avoidable instability or bypass the responsibilities already in front of you.
The freedom that remains
The video’s message is not that you control everything. You do not.
You may not control which seeds from the past are already ready to flower. You may not control collective events, other people’s choices, or every condition affecting your life. You may not even control your first emotional reaction.
But you can begin to notice what happens next.
Will you water anger, or pause? Will you strengthen resentment, or investigate it? Will you repeat harmful speech, or choose restraint? Will you let difficulty make you bitter, or allow it to deepen your understanding?
Perhaps only 10 percent is in your hands. But 10 percent practiced consistently is not insignificant. It is where meditation becomes action, where karma becomes education, and where conditioned life begins to open toward freedom.
Take a few quiet minutes today. Notice one seed you have been watering and one seed you would like to nourish instead. Then choose one small, kind, deliberate action.
That is enough for this moment. Begin there.
