Mind as a Mystery

  If one's mind is already as perfect as Buddhism often says it is, why do we need to rest our thoughts on the breath or a specific object in meditation? This questions seems like a simple one, but in fact, it is not so simple to explain or describe. After the sitting practice this evening, a newcomer to meditation had remarked on how staying with the breath had felt quite boring, and she felt herself drifting into wandering thoughts. It's one thing to explain what happens over time when the desire for more thoughts and stimulation starts to settle. But again, I go back to this question: if mind is already inherently perfect, do we even need to get rid of the 'bored' feelings?
   I think that the method (or object) of meditation is so necessary, because it trains people to use their mind to contemplate in specific ways. One of our teachers often uses the analogy of computer software and viruses: while it's true that the computer's operating system is always intact, it's the software itself that can distort the way the computer operates. That operating system always remains pure in its action, but it gets twisted into all sorts of notions and powers which determine what it will do. In a sense, settling the mind allows me to enjoy the mind's original nature; neither attached to things nor negating them, not limited to experiences yet encompassing them. It is as though one knows deep in one's heart that they are out of jail, and it fills them with so much joy that they are willing to visit the jail again to free the other prisoners. You work with the phenomena, but you are not so bound emotionally by the phenomena. You know that this phenomena  does not define who you are, but we are also not defined by 'getting away' from phenomena either.
    For instance, during the meditation tonight, I had initially been bombarded with so many wandering thoughts. It was hard to settle the mind. But over time, I started to inquire through the method of huatou: just what exactly is this mind that I am supposed to be 'settling'? What does it really look like anyway? Can I point to anything and say, 'this is it', or  'this is my true mind'? And then over time, it just became more mysterious: the whole process of trying to settle what I can't even really grasp. It's a bit like trying to understand the physics of a cloud. It would be a great dishonor to the cloud to try to reduce its being to an equation, so think of the mind. At that point in the process of using huatou, it no longer seems to matter so much whether this mind is settled or not, since the meaning of mind becomes so much harder to grasp. Even 'settling' the mind seems to be one function, while having scattered thoughts is another. The two functions never intersect at all; they are just choices that we choose to engage in.
    I think that through this process, things do settle. But I think it's most likely because I am not so much focused on individual functions as the totality of this mysterious and changing process called mind. The point of the repeated method is not to cram mind into one tiny space, but to allow people the platform to behold the mind.