The Principle of Turning Stone into Gold

As for the supernatural power of "turning stone into gold," it works like this: the manas issues a command, and the tathāgatagarbha alters the seeds that produce the stone, transforming them into seeds capable of combining into gold, and the stone thereby becomes gold. If the manas can cause one's own tathāgatagarbha to transform stone into gold, is it possible to make the external sense-objects jointly held by the tathāgatagarbhas of all sentient beings—such as a stone—turn into gold? Or, is it possible to make another person's tathāgatagarbha transform stone into gold? Through their inner power, sentient beings can take external, shared material objects and appropriate them for their own use. For example, all edible food and drink, all wearable clothing, and all usable items—these material things may be destroyed by oneself, used by oneself alone, or altered by oneself. The transformation of stone into gold is precisely a case of a public stone being altered by oneself, becoming material that one possesses exclusively.

Turning stone into gold relies primarily on one's personal power of meditative concentration (samādhi), but it also depends on the power of merit. If one's merit is insufficient, even if one could turn stone into gold, one would not be able to enjoy it. Merit is an indispensable condition for accomplishing any endeavor. A genuine practitioner will never disdain his own merit, will never be satisfied with the merit he has, and will never squander his merit at will.