Cultivating on False Appearances to Perfect All Merits

All dharmas in the mundane world are illusory appearances conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha, but illusory appearances have their functions; if one skillfully uses these appearances, one attains true and genuine bodhi. We must not, upon hearing that everything is an illusory appearance, reject and discard them all. Setting aside whether we even have the ability to extinguish illusory appearances, if all illusory appearances were extinguished, how then would true bodhi practice the Way? Bodhisattvas in their cultivation should skillfully make use of illusory appearances to perfect all merits, transforming the defiled into the beautiful, and the evil into the pure. Some people feel that mundane dharmas are greatly unsatisfactory, that their living environment severely obstructs them, and so they wish to escape and extinguish all mundane dharmas in order to attain purity. However, these mundane dharmas correspond to one's own karmic seeds; only by changing one's karma and changing one's mind can everything around oneself become agreeable and satisfactory.

When cultivation reaches a certain level, mundane dharmas will no longer obstruct oneself, nor will they affect oneself; the mind will gradually become free from the bondage of these illusory appearances. Through effective cultivation, we can also transform these illusory appearances of the six sense objects, turning evil into good, ugliness into beauty, and the disagreeable into the agreeable. When the mind changes, the inner and outer object-aspects (nimitta) change simultaneously, because when the mind-ground changes, the karmic seeds change, and the object-aspects can then change accordingly.

The inner and outer object-aspects of the six sense objects can be completely transformed. As long as one's mental power is sufficient, turning stone into gold is not a difficult feat. Great bodhisattvas possessing meditative concentration (samādhi) can perform myriad transformations, turning the earth into gold and lapis lazuli; bodhisattvas at the eighth bhūmi can even manifest a trichiliocosm (three-thousandfold great world system) to benefit and bring joy to sentient beings. When cultivation reaches the point where the mind's capacity is vast and mental power is strong, one can alter the proportional structure of the four great element seeds—earth, water, fire, and wind. When the proportions of the four great elements change, the structure of matter changes; when the structure changes, the properties of matter change. Then white snow can be turned into white sugar, and dust can become gold powder. When one cultivates to a certain point, transforming the inner and outer object-aspects of all dharmas is not a difficult matter.