“Beyond compare” is a popular phrase dating back to at least the 16th century. It is found in Elizabethan literature, notably by Shakespeare, to describe unparalleled beauty, virtue, or excellence. It conveys something so unique or exceptional that it cannot be measured against others. Presence certainly feels “beyond compare” in this traditional, exceptional and extraordinary sense.
But what if something could be beyond compare not because it's superior, but because it exists outside the realm where comparison is even possible? We move through life comparing everything. Ourselves to others. Other people to each other. This moment to the last one. What we have to what we want. Based on these endless comparisons, we assign value to each person, each experience, each possession. With the values we allocate, we calculate how they might fulfill our unmet needs and desires. We strategize and manipulate our interactions. Without quite meaning to, we turn relationships into transactions, connections into calculations.
This comparing mind exhausts us. It sets us up for inevitable moments of feeling worthless when we come up short, and equally problematic moments of feeling superior when others seem less than. We oscillate between these poles, never finding solid ground. The comparing mind promises that if we could just win enough comparisons, we'd finally be happy. But it's a promise that can never be kept, because there's always another comparison waiting.
What we might not realize is that comparison requires distance. We must step outside experience to judge it, separate ourselves from others to measure against them. Comparison depends on the space between subject and object, observer and observed.
Presence collapses that space.
When we're truly present, really here in this moment without agenda or analysis, something remarkable happens. The comparing mind goes quiet. Not through effort or discipline, but because presence and comparison cannot coexist.
In presence, we're not choosing to stop comparing. We simply find ourselves in a space where comparison doesn't compute. The question "am I better or worse?" becomes as meaningless as asking if blue is faster than Tuesday. The mental machinery that usually sorts everything into hierarchies of value simply shuts down.
This is freedom. Not the freedom of winning comparisons, but freedom from the entire game. In presence, we encounter ourselves and others before value has been assigned, before worth has been calculated. We meet life directly, without the exhausting intermediary of constant measurement or the calibration of a response.
What emerges in this space beyond compare? An unexpected recognition of inherent value, not earned or achieved but simply present in all things. A natural compassion that doesn't arise from comparing sufferings but from recognizing suffering itself. A contentment that doesn't depend on having more or being better, but on simply being. A way of exchanging a moment without posturing for defense, preparing for rebuttal or angling for advantage. It’s a sincerity of exchange free from distraction. A complete and total receiving of what and who is before us. It implies an open mind and a receptive heart.
Presence is beyond compare because it reveals what exists before comparison begins and what remains after comparison ends. It's not that presence is too good to be compared. It's that presence is the space where comparison cannot reach, the moment before the mind divides experience into better and worse, the ground where all beings stand equal in their simple fact of being.
Every moment offers this doorway out of comparison and into presence. Every breath can be the one that brings us home to this moment, beyond compare, where we need not be more or less than what we are. Where we can finally rest from the endless measuring and simply be here, incomparably here, irreplaceably ourselves, meeting others who are irreplaceably themselves.
This is what awaits beyond compare. Not a superior state to be achieved, but a present moment to be inhabited. Not another thing to compare ourselves against, but the end of comparison itself.
