Comparison and self-cherishing

31 teachings in the library are about this.

Week Two - Status & Insignificance David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded September 29, 2026
The hope for status and the fear of insignificance, and how they show up at work, among friends, online and in Dharma communities. David explains why self-esteem built on other people's opinions is fragile, and why hope and fear lose their grip once we see the ego self as a character in a video game. In the guided contemplation we recall a time we felt important and a time we felt overlooked, and look at the impermanence of each. A closing question: noticing this in others without lecturing.
Session Two - Self-Compassion and Buddha Nature David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded September 26, 2026
David sets out Kristin Neff's three elements of self-compassion, self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness, and explains why self-criticism puts us under attack and shuts down learning. He talks about the Buddha's three kinds of conceit, better than, same as and worse than, and why feeling the worst is still self-cherishing. Against the critic he sets Buddha nature: nothing is missing, only obscured. The loving kindness practice, for ourselves and a loved one, closes on "I have worth".
D3S3 - Questions on Perfectionism, Judgement and Grief David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded August 9, 2026
A few minutes of stillness and the breath open the evening, then David works through the questions. He covers how to reconcile a powerful psychedelic experience with practice, why a glimpse of something profound fades without stability of mind, perfectionism and judgement, and what happens when we keep offering love and get none back. Later ones cover limiting how much world news we take in, the RAIN tool for waves of grief, and encouraging a partner by our own example.
Session Two - From Need to Care, and the Open Palm David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026
David shifts the basis of a relationship from need to care, then reads Thich Nhat Hanh on loving in such a way that the person you love feels free. Contentment and gratitude come in as the medicine for attachment, and equanimity as the open palm rather than the fist closed around a songbird that has landed in it. David then guides a practice in which we turn towards the fear of things changing with reassurance rather than argument, and wish a loved one free. It closes on the group's own reflections.
Guided Meditation - Rejoicing in Your Own Life and the Good in the World David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026
Rejoicing starts with your own life history, with any goodness received from the world and any brought to it, however small. Then someone you care about at a moment of their excitement, their joy felt as your own and breathed in, with the phrase may your good fortune continue. It widens to people who inspire you and to the communities working for those in need, then to anyone you envy or resent, and comes back to you.
Working with Moods David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded April 12, 2026
In twenty minutes of mindfulness of breathing we count the breath down from seven to steady a busy mind, followed by a short contemplation on what you would like to offer yourself and others today. David explains the difference between an emotion and a mood, why a mood lowers our threshold for reacting, and suggests quarantining ourselves through quiet and noble silence until a bad mood passes.
D5S3 - Empathetic Joy, and Delighting in the Good Fortune of Others David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025
The third immeasurable, and the most uplifting: being happy with someone rather than only for them, on the understanding that joy is not locked inside one person. David says this one comes to life out in the world, and tells of a low, isolated spell when he could not face going outside but could watch kids playing and a dog running after a ball from his window, and feel delight instead of the miserly mind asking why he did not have that. Questions afterwards on giving within our means, and on sustaining motivation when shamatha is not all or nothing.
D2S3 - Loving Kindness, Beginning With Yourself David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025
The first of two evenings on loving kindness, given to what David calls such a tricky area for many of us: loving kindness for oneself. He is direct about how the classic practice starts with the self and stalls there for many Westerners, and offers contemplations that get underneath it, including something kind you have done and a quality you admire in yourself. A guided practice follows, then questions on a mind sent worrying, and on expectations too high, where he passes on the Dalai Lama's words to Lama Alan: expectation is the foundation of failure.
Session 2 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
This second session opens with a twenty minute meditation in which we settle body and mind, then recite the eight verses together. David works through the third verse on watching the mind and applying antidotes to afflictions, then the fourth on cherishing difficult people as a rare chance to practise compassion. A poll shows self cherishing can hide inside low self esteem as much as pride. Questions cover compassion versus empathy, accepting compliments, and giving victory to others.
D2S1 - Hovering, Comparison, and the Five Obscurations Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan introduces hovering, staying aware of being aware rather than dissolving into the breath, and traces suffering to grasping at what is not I or mine and failing to recognise what we are, the trap behind both low self-esteem and its mirror, feeling superior to others. He sets out the five obscurations, craving, malice, dullness, agitation and uncertainty, and shows how factors that arise naturally through practice act as their antidotes.
Comparison is the Thief of Joy David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded May 11, 2025
A meditation on mindfulness of breathing, following the Buddha's instructions to know whether each breath is long or short, then to experience the whole body and let it settle and calm. David turns to the saying that comparison is the thief of joy, and shows how both feeling superior and feeling inadequate trap us in the same self-focus, built on partial pictures we mistake for the whole. He offers mudita, empathetic joy in another's happiness, as the way to turn comparison into celebration.
Session 3 - Cultivating Bodhicitta & Generosity David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded February 5, 2025
In the guided meditation we work through the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for cultivating bodhicitta, recognising all beings as having once been a mother, then building gratitude, loving-kindness and great resolve. David contrasts this with the equalising and exchanging method, then turns to the first paramita, generosity, described as a state of mind rather than an act, using the story of a poor woman's simple offering to the Buddha. Questions cover how expectation can quietly poison giving.
D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instruction on cause and effect, from recognising kindness to the great resolve, then explains why self-cherishing is the root of misery and how tonglen exchanges it for others. Questions turn to where kindness tips into people pleasing, and whether karma means we should not intervene in someone else's suffering.
D6S2 - Self-Cherishing, Honest Speech and Healthy Boundaries David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In a meditation on exchanging self-cherishing for cherishing others we weigh putting our own happiness first against treating everyone's welfare as equal. David covers examining one's own faults rather than gossiping about others, when raising real harm differs from criticism born of jealousy, and speech that passes tests of being true, kind and well timed. Questions turn on boundaries, forgiveness and self-neglect.
Part Two - The Spiritual Warrior, and the Mind Training Commitments Ondy Willson · 98 minutes · recorded October 26, 2024
The spiritual warrior is on an inner crusade, not one aimed at anybody else. The tantric view that we are already enlightened and held back by a small idea of ourselves, a long visualisation that breaks the rock of ego around Buddha nature, fear as the thing that blocks courage, and the commitments of the seven point mind training read through and argued over.
Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy (Mudita) David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded October 8, 2024
Taking delight in the good fortune of others, starting with someone whose good cheer is infectious, then a loved one, a stranger receiving good news, and the people whose success would normally twist your heart. It turns inward near the end, to rejoicing in your own small kindnesses and in the teachers behind them.
Session 4 - Empathetic Joy David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded October 8, 2024
The session opens with a short settling practice, then the teaching on mudita, empathetic joy: rejoicing in another's happiness rather than only our own. David sets out what gets in its way, comparison, judgment, envy, using Sharon Salzberg's monkey stuck in tar. Questions cover noticing joy in small creatures and unexpected jealousy. In the long guided meditation we extend joy through a joyful friend, a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, closing with rejoicing in our own good qualities.
Relax & Go Easy On Yourself David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded September 15, 2024
A settling meditation that moves from the body into gratitude for the day ahead, then into setting a simple intention for how to show up. David talks about the pressure practitioners put on themselves to progress quickly, drawing on his own teacher's account of burnout among devoted students, and argues that consistency matters more than intensity. He closes with the reminder that patience with our own practice is itself a form of patient acceptance.
Three Types of Patience & Self-Cherishing David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded May 22, 2024
After a short meditation in which we settle the breath, David sets out the three traditional types of patience: not retaliating when harmed, voluntarily accepting difficulty, and patience with the Dharma itself while still learning it. He explores self-cherishing through mundane examples, the last parking space, the electric car charging queue, and the Dalai Lama's wise versus foolish selfish. Questions cover self-care, a barber's story of self-cherishing hidden inside helping, and patience with oneself.
D5S5 - The Difficult Person, and Privilege Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 63 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The full sequence now reaches a difficult person, and the rest of the evening is questions. Someone who panics around people asks how to believe they have a right to exist. A breathless feeling in the chest is not loving kindness itself, which is mental, but probably some tensing up. Michael Lobsang Tenpa separates self-cherishing from self-care, and answers a question about women and ordination first with lineages of female ordination that died out, then with blind spots and privilege.
Week 3: Empathetic Joy (Mudita): Sharing in the joy and happiness of others David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded June 22, 2023
After checking in on the week's practice of loving kindness and compassion, David turns to mudita, joy at others' happiness, naming its near enemies, envy and cynicism, and using the image of a monkey stuck in tar for how comparison and judgement trap us. He describes noticing joy in daily life and on social media rather than resenting it. Questions move into acceptance and childhood hurt before a closing meditation in which we recall loved ones' joy and everyday kindness seen out in the world.
Cultivating Joy David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded April 30, 2023
We settle into stillness with an open awareness meditation, before turning to a recent moment of real joy, wishing that same happiness for every being and extending empathetic joy to good news witnessed in others. David talks about why Buddhism deliberately cultivates joy rather than only addressing suffering, naming empathetic joy, the practice of wishing pleasure universally shared, and the joy that comes from a settled mind and from wisdom itself.
Week 4: When We’re Blamed or Harmed - Transforming Self-Cherishing (23 March 2023) David Oromith · 74 minutes · recorded March 23, 2023
This closing session opens with a practice of resting in open, non-reactive awareness of body, sight and sound, before David turns to self-cherishing, the habitual sense that my comfort and my losses matter more than anyone else's. He traces it through everyday scenes, a parking space, the last loaf of bread, and sets out equalising self and others as the corrective, citing Shantideva on cherishing others. Questions cover recognising ego in colleagues and guarding against burnout.
Dealing with Difficult People David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded May 11, 2022
This talk on dealing with difficult people opens with a short guided practice in which we settle attention into the breath. David argues the person is a trigger but not the whole cause, our own grasping and self-cherishing complete it, and separates the external problem, needing boundaries or action, from the internal one, needing patience and compassion. He returns to depressive Danny as a running example, and questions cover trauma, cheating, and how far compassion extends to someone malicious.
Self-Cherishing vs Cherishing Others David Oromith · 37 minutes · recorded May 8, 2022
In the classic loving kindness practice we move from ourself to someone loved, someone neutral and someone we find difficult. David talks about self-cherishing, the mind's habit of placing our own comfort above everyone else's, from wanting the fastest lane to the last item in the shop. He explains the Mahayana shift towards cherishing others instead, quoting Shantideva that all happiness comes from this and all suffering from self-focus alone.
Tong-Len and Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded September 5, 2021
A Tonglen visualisation: a radiant orb of light at the heart absorbs the suffering of yourself, then loved ones, then the wider world on each in breath, and breathes out loving kindness on each out breath. David explains why this giving and taking practice is an antidote to self cherishing, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of realising we are the traffic too. He connects the practice to bodhicitta, the wish to help all beings rather than only ourselves.
When People Turn Against Us Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 16 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo explains Atisha's Lojong line on how we respond when people we have been kind to turn against us. She says these texts were written by honoured lamas, so for us taking the lowest place does not mean low self-esteem: it means stepping out of the way, so that in any encounter the other person is the one who matters. Difficult people then become our teachers of patience. With thanks to the Meridian Trust.
Lojong, the Eight Verses of Mind Training Lama Alan · 28 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace works through the Eight Verses of Mind Training of Langri Tangpa, verse by verse. You learn to hold others supremely dear, to seek out their virtues rather than their faults, to catch a mental affliction the moment it stirs, and to treat difficult people as rare treasure. The closing verses turn to tonglen and to freeing practice from the eight worldly concerns and from grasping at a reality he describes as dreamlike.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Neutral Person and Someone You Find Difficult Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace carries the sequence of loving kindness out to a neutral person, someone you know but barely notice. You picture them vividly, even imagine being them, and offer the four aspirations breath by breath. Then you bring to mind someone you find disagreeable and examine the cartoon you have made of them. Looking past behaviour to the wish for happiness beneath it, you extend the same aspirations, then open in every direction to all beings.
Tong-len (Taking & Giving) Glen Svensson · 88 minutes
Tonglen, giving and taking, practised twice: first for ourselves and a friend, then we choose one mental affliction to dissolve and one quality to cultivate, before opening out to others. Glen Svensson compares the traditional black rock of self-cherishing with the light at the heart he prefers, warning against holding the smoke to punish yourself. The aspiration to take the suffering and give happiness is the key, and once learnt it can be done on a single breath as you approach a difficult person.
Exchanging Self with Others Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
The second method for cultivating bodhicitta, historically called the secret method because it was considered too profound and difficult for the normal person, though Glen Svensson thinks that may be the reverse now, since it tackles self-cherishing head-on. The session opens with great loving kindness, and in a second practice we reflect on the disadvantages of a me first attitude from our own past. He cites a study in which people who use the words I, me and mine a lot had a 35 per cent greater risk of heart attack.

Comparison and self-cherishing

Comparison and self-cherishing

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