A way of thinking

Hot historian Harari, Apple’s high priest Jobs, and Japanese decluttering queen Hideko Yamashita—at first glance they have nothing in common. But I’ve noticed they share something: they can step outside their own environment and think deeply about the self without following the crowd. I suspect their thinking may be shaped by mindfulness practice. That made me curious. I don’t have a Buddhist background, but to understand what kind of thinking exercise this is, I took my first mindfulness class a few days ago.

Eating a raisin

The first exercise was eating a raisin. I’ve always liked raisins—sweet little things, pretty tasty. Rationally I know they’re made from grapes, but while eating I don’t think of grapes, and they don’t look like grapes at all.

The four raisins for the exercise were as ordinary as they come. The teacher guided us with words to feel every sensation of eating them. I noticed the wrinkled surface—you could actually see grape skin, with a sheen. Looking closer, some dull spots looked like the skin had already broken before it became a raisin.

I picked one up and tried to feel its weight. At first I felt nothing, but after shaking it a little I noticed the raisin did have the tiniest bit of weight.

The skin wasn’t sticky, harder than I expected; pressing left a permanent dent, almost no spring.

Held up and shaken by my ear, it made no sound; when my fingers left the surface there was a slight sticky noise.

The raisin’s wrinkles twisted; under the light some parts looked translucent—clearly a whole grape shrunk down.

My nose picked up a clear charcoal-roasted smell; it may have been fire-dried. Pinching the right nostril shut, I found the left was more congested and smelled less, though carefully I still caught the aroma—and it seemed different from smelling with the right nostril alone.

That clear smell excited me so much my hands shook for a moment. Something as familiar as a raisin turned out to have so many interesting traits I’d never noticed.

The feel of a raisin on the lips was quite different from on the skin of the hand; the lips registered it more clearly.

Biting through, the skin was tougher—it took some force to break; the flesh was softer than the skin, and it really tasted like grape, very sweet, with fruit notes too.

As I kept chewing, sweetness kept coming. Most of the flesh and skin mixed with saliva and slid into the body; when the molars flattened the skin there was a slight astringency. So eating raisins is really eating grapes without spitting out the skins.

Different raisins had subtle differences too: the first was rounder, the second flatter; the third and fourth had a net-like square wrinkle pattern—I wonder if that relates to how they’re made.

The second was less sweet than the first; pressing them in the mouth, the third felt softer than the second.

Awareness

The fourth raisin was different: chew, spit it out, look carefully at what came out, then swallow it back.

Before spitting I thought it would look disgusting. It didn’t. I calmly looked at it: a clear, clean liquid with a bit of body, two bubbles, full of raisin fragments.

I also had doubts before swallowing it back—intuitively the taste should be weird. In the moment of swallowing it did feel weird in my head, but carefully tasting in the mouth, it wasn’t much different from before I spit it out—yet there was still a faint sense of disgust.

What I found most interesting about swallowing it back was that I noticed the feeling of “I find this disgusting.”

Objectively, what came out is the same stuff that was in the mouth; swallowing it back should be no big deal—so why the disgust?

Is it education? Culture? Something else?

The cause may not be the most important thing. What mattered was that when I noticed “I find this disgusting” is my subjective experience, not an objective fact, the disgust seemed less intense.

That noon I tried eating lunch this way. Lunch didn’t taste better; the process was more fun—an active discovery of all the possibilities in eating.

Thoughts

Over the next few days, my curious questions slowly formed into a rough idea.

• Why can Harari step outside a human-centered view to think about human history?
• Why could Steve Jobs step outside the electronics industry’s view to think about and market products?
• Why can Hideko Yamashita step outside our biological hoarding habits and culture to help people declutter?

For example, strength training uses simple moves everyone can do, then adds load to build muscle. Mindfulness uses breathing, eating, and sitting that everyone can do, for thinking in the present and thinking about the relationship between self and environment—brain strength training.

The muscle you grow in the gym you can use in sports you like, for better mobility or everyday health. Mindfulness trains the brain the same way, so at work and in life we can step out of biological inertia.

Who am I, where am I

It made me think that when I code I can notice things in time, for example:

• Is my mind on this program, or in yesterday’s Game of Thrones?
• Have I cleared away distractions? Phone and computer on Do Not Disturb?
• Where does this program sit in the whole project?
• Is the logic I’m writing clear for whoever reads it?
• How long is this feature taking?
• Is this approach extensible?
• Have I tried a different approach?
• How might the library or framework I’m using be built inside?
• Where does this framework or language sit in the software industry?
• What stage is frontend work in my life?

Like strength training, I think mindfulness practice and improvement can be endless. Once you’re used to thinking this way, you don’t have to keep comparing yourself to others—but you can see more clearly who you are, where you are, what you’re doing, and enjoy the process of coding itself more.

Have you practiced mindfulness? Did you notice anything eating a raisin? I’d love to hear.

Image source: meme梗圖倉庫