How is a meditative concentration (samādhi) state generated?

Question: When the disciple contemplates the setting sun, I feel my eyes becoming warm, and I vaguely sense a yellowish light, but without any clear outline—just a blurry mass of light. What is the reason for this?

Answer: This is an illusion of the manas. Whatever the manas thinks of, the tathāgatagarbha manifests in accordance with it, and thus we have it. Our five aggregates are all imagined forth by the manas. For example, pointing at a stone and calling it gold: there is originally no gold before your eyes, but if the manas, in very deep meditative concentration, insists that gold must be there, the tathāgatagarbha has no choice but to transform gold for you. We originally did not have a trichiliocosm (three-thousandfold great world system), but when an eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva's samādhi and wisdom are both very powerful, the manas wants a trichiliocosm, and the tathāgatagarbha, in accordance with that, manifests a trichiliocosm out of thin air. Therefore, all dharmas are created by the mind alone. One meaning of this is that the tathāgatagarbha directly transforms and creates them for us. But according to what does the tathāgatagarbha transform and create them? It creates them according to the thinking of the manas. If you seize hold of the manas's thinking, you can obtain whatever you wish: if the manas thinks of good things, good things will be created; if the manas thinks of bad things, bad things will be created. For example, if the manas has greed, hatred, and delusion, the tathāgatagarbha will transform and create the suffering of birth and death in the six realms of saṃsāra. Is the thinking of the mind consciousness useful then? The mind consciousness's thinking must influence the manas so that the manas also thinks in the same way for it to be useful; if it does not cause the manas to think likewise, the mind consciousness's thinking has no effect. Such is the principle.

What about our illnesses? If the body truly has cancer, and my manas simply decides there is nothing to it, letting the mind relax and empty out, the cancer will disappear. When your mind believes it is not there, the tathāgatagarbha withdraws the four great elements of that cancer, and the cancer is gone. All dharmas arise from mental thinking—this is exactly the principle.

In contemplating the setting sun, when the mind thinks of the setting sun, in the future you will accomplish a samādhi meditative state in which, whether your eyes are open or closed, the setting sun is there, just as if it were real—this is manifested by the tathāgatagarbha in accordance with the manas's thinking. The key is how to turn the mind consciousness's thinking into the manas's thinking. Once the manas's thinking becomes unshakable, the scenery of the setting sun appears right before your eyes. All samādhi meditative states are cultivated in this way. Once you accomplish one, you will accomplish two, three, even four or five; endless samādhis will all manifest, and the world itself will change.