佛祖統紀 1.18

1.18

釋迦如來。最初得佛之後。大悲利物。未來不息。以故果後示權。數數出世。莫可以三際求其始終。況於十方國土。唱生唱滅。處處不同。豈當於此南洲一方畢其能事。然今所錄。但於此方。特舉垂教之要會。而通之則十方不離當處。三世秖在一心。尚何有所異同者哉。今約如來在凡因行至今出興為大法王。明本迹。敘聖源。列大小八相。分頓漸二始。經歷五時。鋪陳一化。作教主釋迦牟尼佛本紀四卷。自大迦葉下至師子尊者。皆能仰承佛記。傳弘大法。謂之金口祖承。依付法藏。作西土二十四祖紀一卷。

After Śākyamuni Tathāgata first attained Buddhahood, through great compassion he benefited living beings without ceasing into the future. For this reason, after attaining the fruit he manifested expedient means, appearing in the world again and again, such that his beginning and end cannot be sought within the three times. How much less so in the lands of the ten directions, where proclaiming birth and proclaiming extinction differ from place to place! How could he have completed his activities solely in this one quarter of the southern continent? Yet what is recorded now merely selects the essential assemblies where teachings were handed down in this land; if one penetrates it, then the ten directions are not apart from this very place, and the three times are solely within the single mind. What difference or sameness could there still be? Now, summarizing from the Tathāgata's causal practices when as an ordinary being down to his present arising as the King of the Great Dharma, clarifying the origin and traces, narrating the sacred source, listing the eight phases according to both the Great and Small [Vehicles], dividing the two beginnings of sudden and gradual, passing through the five periods, and setting forth his lifetime of teaching, I have composed the Basic Annals of the Teaching Lord Buddha Śākyamuni in four fascicles. From Mahākāśyapa down to Āryasiṃha, all were able reverently to receive the Buddha's prediction and transmit and propagate the Great Dharma; this is called the patriarchal transmission from the golden mouth. Relying on the *Fu fazang*, I have composed the Chronicle of the Twenty-Four Patriarchs of the Western Lands in one fascicle.