廣弘明集 1.19

1.19

The account says: At that time, there were the śramaṇas Kāśyapa Mātaṅga and Dharmaratna, whose spiritual rank and practices were fathomless, and whose minds were set on spreading conversion. When the envoy Cai Yin arrived, he invited Mātaṅga to travel east. Not confined to any boundary, he accompanied him to Luoyang, explaining the dispositions of beings and venerating the fundamental truth. The emperor asked Mātaṅga: “Since the Buddha’s Dharma appeared in the world, why did its conversion not reach here?” He answered: “The kingdom of Kapilavastu is the center of the chiliocosm with its billions of suns and moons. All Buddhas of the three periods are born there. Down to the heavenly dragons, ghosts, and spirits who possess vows and practice, all are born there, receiving the Buddha’s true conversion and all attaining awakening. Living beings in other places who lack the conditions to evoke the Buddha do not receive his visit. Although the Buddha does not go there, wherever his light reaches, after five hundred years, or one thousand years, or beyond one thousand years, there are always sages who transmit the sound and teaching of the Buddha to convert and guide them.” As he expounded the doctrines extensively, because the text is long, it is abridged here.