Ways of Knowing: The Yuck is Not in the Raisin

The Wisdom seal from Unity Village’s 12 Powers Walk

Remember the first time you mindfully ate a raisin? If you were like me, it was a little surprising. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I heard a raisin (IFYKYK). It certainly was the first time I understood in more than an intellectual kind of way that the yuck is not in the raisin (I will explain more about that later). Since that day, I’ve come to realize lots of things deserve a closer look.

As I began to more consistently practice mindfulness, I noticed a number of different ways of being and knowing. One way is thinking about the world, which in my case is mostly through words (for others it’s images). This particular way I try to make sense of things consists of a narrative made up of references to past experiences, information I’ve learned, assumptions I’m making, comparisons, appraisals, elaborations, predictions. This is the way I was taught to work things out through conversations, in school through teachings and books, and it’s what I’ve been doing most of the time, most of my life. It’s what I’m used to and it can be very useful.

This kind of thinking, sometimes called discursive thought, is the constant mental chatter that is happening mostly unconsciously when we’re on autopilot. It’s the familiar voice or scenes from a movie playing inside our heads that can feel fairly random and impulsive, and sometimes even chaotic or compulsive. It can be both the source of our creativity and restful daydreams and of our own self-torture. It’s a function of the imagination – a necessary ingredient in some of humanity’s greatest discoveries and works of art – as well as our most egregious acts of harm and descents into madness.

Another way of knowing is simply being in the world. It’s what I’m doing in my formal practice and more and more in my daily life. I’m learning to truly inhabit my body, be more present in the moment, and aware of experience as it’s unfolding. When I’m formally practicing this way of being, I’m investigating experience intentionally.

As I’m learning to simply be more often in my life, there’s a particular way of thinking about experience that I’m strengthening through practice. Contemplative (or reflective) thought is the kind of thinking we do when we’re intentionally investigating our experience. It’s learning to discern what might be important about our experience such as, where am I noticing this in my body? or what feelings are arising? This type of thinking seemed new to me at first and I’ve found it very useful.

When I first mindfully ate a raisin, I knew that I didn’t like raisins. I knew it when I heard the word raisin, when I saw it there in my hand, before it ever even went into my mouth. But I didn’t really know: 

• how I knew that I didn’t like it.
• how not liking showed up in my body,
• where not liking was located or where it was most pronounced,
• when not liking started and ended, and
• what other phenomena were associated with not liking.

I started to recognize how much my mind was layering onto my experience and I began to get curious about how I really know something to be so. I saw that I was behaving as if the “yuck” resided in the raisin itself – as if raisins were inherently yucky. The yuck is not in the raisin.

Most of the time we don’t recognize that our experience is not separate from the workings of the mind. This might not seem like that big of a deal when we’re talking about raisins, but consider all the various likes and dislikes we encounter in our days – how they impact our moods, reactions and choices. Imagine all the things each of us could put on our list of things we love, despise or disregard as inconsequential. Then reflect on the habits and patterns we have around our preferences, for better or worse, and the repercussions this has in our lives – and for the greater society. Could it be helpful for us to know ourselves a little better – to have more awareness and choicefulness around how we respond?

Suffering has been called the space between expectation and reality. Perhaps this is where the yuck is. Our practice can help us recognize the habit of mind of falling into this illusory chasm. By seeing how we attempt to construct a world that makes sense to us from the mental events we attend to (a “bespoke truth”), we come to understand the conditional and impermanent nature of existence. We also discover what is unhelpful or harmful and, as much as possible, let go of these things – and what is helpful or beneficial and, as best we can, cultivate these things. In our practice we can ask ourselves, what causes or supports the arising of certain problematic or beneficial mental states? What makes them more likely to stick around? Under what conditions are they more likely to pass away? This is the mind knowing itself.

As you’re probably thinking, it’s not so simple. Life is complicated. There are many factors to consider. We live in diverse sociopolitical contexts, in community, and on a planet we share and depend upon for survival. There are short term and long term consequences to our actions. We have all of this to discern.

I’ve found that even though in many ways I’m looking more closely at things, focusing and attending more deeply, practicing mindfulness (especially in community) has been incredibly expansive. These ways of knowing open us up to new ways of experiencing our lives and being with each other. Of course you must have your own raisin moment to truly know this. I will leave you with a word; ehipassiko. It’s one of the things I appreciate most about the ancient traditions that inform my contemplative practice – a Pali term I learned from Bikkhu Bodhi’s writings that means “come and see for yourself“.

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard yet always present.
When all other things seem lively and real, this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips,
as the sound of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft that this mortal time,
this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.

– Annie Lighthart, The Second Music