māna
Conceit
[ MAA-na ]
Seeing it in life
Māna is the conceit ‘I am.’ It is uprooted only at arahantship and arises in greed-rooted cittas dissociated from view.
In short
Measuring oneself against others — superior, equal, inferior.
The analysis
Māna is the conceit 'I am' — not necessarily arrogance, but any measuring of oneself against others: superior, equal, or inferior. All three comparisons count as māna, which is part of why it's unusually persistent — even feeling inferior involves the same underlying measuring-against-a-self that feeling superior does. Māna arises only in greed-rooted cittas dissociated from wrong view.
Where it sits
Māna is one of the ten fetters and, notably, one of the last to be uprooted — not until full arahantship, well after sakkāya-diṭṭhi is severed at stream-entry. Intellectually seeing there's no fixed self is different from no longer, even subtly, measuring oneself against others.
The comparison that arises unbidden when hearing about someone else's success — better than, worse than, or even carefully 'the same as' — before any conscious evaluation, is māna, present in a form far more persistent than obvious arrogance.
Commonly mistaken for
Arrogance specifically. Feeling inferior is also māna, by the technical definition — any self-measuring counts.
Fully addressed by humility. Māna is uprooted only at arahantship; ordinary humility can coexist with a subtler form of the same comparing tendency.
Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha II; Māna Sutta (AN 6.20).
Related terms