The Principle of Turning Stone into Gold

The so-called supernatural power of "turning stone into gold" works like this: the manas issues a command, and the tathāgatagarbha changes the seeds that give rise to the stone, transforming them into seeds that can combine into gold, and thus the stone turns into 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 upheld by the tathāgatagarbhas of sentient beings—such as stones—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 as their own and use them for themselves. For example, all edible food and drink, all wearable clothing, all usable items—these material things may be destroyed by oneself, used by oneself alone, or altered by oneself. Turning stone into gold means that a public stone has been altered by oneself, becoming material possessed by oneself alone.

Turning stone into gold relies mainly on one's personal power of meditative concentration (samādhi), and at the same time also 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 and important condition for accomplishing all endeavors. A genuine practitioner will never disdain his own merit, will never be satisfied with his own merit, and will not casually squander his own merit.