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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Good evening and welcome, welcome.

Maybe I'll say that you're welcome to sit wherever you would like.

If you feel like all the chairs are not in the right place,

you can move chairs around or move cushions around or something like this too.

We never know exactly who's going to arrive, so we just put chairs around.

I'm wondering if any of you have had this, I'm sorry, my ears.

There we go.

I'm wondering if any of you have had an experience like this,

something to me like early in my practice,

coming to meditation centers or to retreats,

when there's these long silent sits, there would be this meditating

and then like, wow, that person in front of me is so still.

I can't be that still.

Oh, this is awful. I can never do this. How can they do that?

They'd never move at all.

And then a little bit later, there's somebody who's refling in their purse

looking for something, making lots of noise.

Then this thought, I'm such a great meditator.

I never make those kinds of noises or something.

How we end up comparing ourselves to others.

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