The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org.

Okay. Okay, so yeah, good to sit with you.

So I was good to sit with you.

So I was on teaching a young adult retreat last week and mostly folks in their 20s.

And somebody asked a question very relevant to that developmental phase

about comparing mind, the mind that, the mind that compares.

And that is of course a time when identity, you know, is being forged and a key way that we, how we know who we are is by looking at others and making

comparisons and

they're really, they're kind of two

they're kind of two dimensions maybe we could say of this comparing mind.

There's the kind of courser level of me comparing myself to another.

And then the second dimension is sort of almost more fundamental.

It's about measurement, measurement. Any sense of territoriality.

And so on the courser level,

we compare ourselves to others, right?

We kind of turn ourselves into a noun,

into a noun, into a thing, an essence, we turn others into a thing, and then we assess the differences, you know, kind of like, you know,

laying one, you know, our vision of ourselves against almost like two sheets of transparency is put against one another, seeing

what the differences are.

And this is a very painful realm, you know, we all know the pain of it.

This is the realm of arrogance and pity and envy of pride and

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