Why cant airbenders fly

In Season 3 of The Legend of Korra , fan-favorite villain Zaheer overcame his "earthly tether" and mastered flight, an ability that was previously only achieved by one person. Other airbenders with more training, like Avatar: The Last Airbender 's Aang and even Monk Gyatso, were also able to soar through the skies, but only with the aid of their gliders or inside a sphere of air.

Their inability to match Zaheer, a relative novice at the craft, seems confusing, but a new theory has suggested that despite their efforts, other airbenders were never able to truly let go of one particular "early tether. An anonymous theory submitted to Tumblr fan account atlalore has proposed that the Air Nomads had all developed an unshakable bond with their flying bison, preventing themselves from accessing flight. They instead relied on the bison for this specific mode of travel that allowed them to reach their hidden temples in the mountains.

There are a number of context clues from both Korra and Avatar that lend support to this hypothesis. In the era before the Avatar, depicted in Season 2, Episode 8, "Beginnings, Part 2," Wan encounters a group of benders who have received the power of airbending from their Lion Turtle.

This was the Thought chakra which "deals with cosmic energy and is blocked by earthly attachment ". Rememeber, each chakra deals in a certain type of spiritual energy, and is blocked by some inherent flaw. Your ability to see the entire world and everything in it with pure objectivity becomes compromised because the people you love and are attached to skew your worldview. Your decision-making becomes relative to the people you care about. Naturally that is how it is for most people. When Aang is on the verge of releasing this chakra, he senses that Katara is in trouble, and chooses to help her, even with the Guru states that leaving now will result in him permanently being detached from the Avatar State.

Even before he attempts to release the chakra, he tells the Guru that he can't let go of his attachment to Katara. Ultimately at the end of the same finale episode, as Aang and Katara are cornered by Zuko, Azula, and the Dai Li, he chooses to open the last path and remove his attachment to Katara ironically so he can save her only to be struck by Azula's lightning and we see a quick flash of him in the cosmic state the same state he went into while meditating to release each of the chakras and sort of fall into the abyss.

Katara also saves him and Aang is unable to go into the Avatar State for a while afterwards, so it's safe to say that path was severed when that happened. Some people say when he met the last lion turtle Aang and is taught the original energybending he also releases that path which is just untrue what's required to energybend and fly are two completely different things but Aang without full spiritual enlightment ends up still being sufficient for him to stop Ozai and end the major conflict of his time.

And either way, Aang definitively loves Katara and is still spiritually imbalanced in the sense that his worldview is skewed by those specifically Katara he loves. Remember what Guru Pathak said earlier to Aang before he attempted to open his Thought chakra? It's likely that the "earthly tether" and "earthly attachment" Laghima and Pathak respectively refer to are the same exact thing.

Now here's the other reason Zaheer was able to fly and Aang wasn't. Zaheer was not without internal imbalance either. He loved P'Li, her being one of the driving forces behind surviving in an insanely secure isolated prison for 13 years. Especially when Zaheer was shown as pretty detached and logical to both allies and enemies alike, P'Li was probably the only perosn he truly cared about. She was his only earthly attachment. It is no coincidence that Zaheer recites Laghima's quote and is able to fly for the first time just moments after Su turns P'Li head into a Easy-Bake Oven.

Zaheer's last earthly attachment was destroyed when P'Li died. It's likely Zaheer was unable to open the Thought Path for the same reason Aang wasn't able to. P'Li's death just also had the affect of pushing him over the spiritual edge and getting rid of that tether for him. Two important contributors are Taoism and Buddhism, and for your question, you would want to take a look at Buddhism.

Not only do the Airbender monks look like their actual Buddhist counterparts down to how Avatar Aang was chosen and how the Dalai Lama was chosen , but they share many of the same tenets. Zaheer had a lot of time to meditate, and his last tether to reality was his interpersonal relationship with P'Li, the combustion bender. Once he presumed her dead, he achieved a stage of enlightenment that allowed him to "be empty" -- and then just levitate away.

Aang was also instructed by a Guru to "let go" of his earthly desires in order to complete his Avatar training and unclog his final chakra, but he refused to do so. Had he done so, it's possible he might have achieved a similar technique to Zaheer. Presumably the enlightenment allows the Airbenders who achieve it to levitate at-will, and Aang might have been capable of something similar had he followed through on his Avatar training with the Guru.

Especially powerful airbenders, those who have mastered the element, can manipulate the air around themselves, which would enable them to fly through it. But there just aren't that many airbenders left. So we just don't see enough airbenders that have really mastered the element enough to fly unassisted. Firebenders generate their own fire. Firebending is all about overpowering force tempered by the unflinching will to accomplish tasks and desires. So a firebender just needs to keep pumping out the fire with enough force and they could fly all day.

The key to Airbending is following the path of least resistance , so an Airbender would naturally fly with their staff on the air, as they don't generate their own. In reality they are simply propelling themselves with jets fire and can't sustain it for very long this is done by Korra and General Iroh of the navy [Zuko's grandson]. Airbender's are much the same, they usually use air to perform jumps that carry them several meters, as seen performed by Aang and Tenzin and most of the other new air benders.

Zaheer and most likely Guru Lahima also have given up their tether to the world in some way. This allows them to fly. Some might say Aang could fly, however he actually couldn't. This happened to Aang. He was advised to kill the Fire Lord, but killing was against his beliefs as an Air Nomad. The Air Nomads are peaceful people who believe that all life is sacred.

They are even strict vegetarians. They fight using mostly defensive techniques, never striking a defenseless opponent.