續集古今佛道論衡 1.6

1.6

"According to the Zhoushu yiji: On the fifteenth day of the second month in the renshen year, the fifty-second year of the reign of King Mu of Zhou, at dawn a violent wind suddenly arose, destroying human dwellings and snapping trees. The mountains, rivers, and the great earth all shook. After noon, the sky turned dark; in the west there was a white rainbow forming twelve bands passing from south to north, not extinguishing throughout the night. King Mu asked the Grand Astrologer Hu Duo: 'What portent is this?' Hu Duo replied: 'A sage in the west has passed into extinction; signs of decline have appeared.' King Mu was greatly pleased and said: 'I was always afraid of him; now he is about to pass into extinction, what should I worry about?' At this time, the Buddha entered nirvāṇa. Counting from the Buddha's entrance into nirvāṇa until now, it is altogether one thousand and twenty-two years." Emperor Ming was greatly pleased and said: "The Zhoushu yiji of my disciples' land and what the Dharma Master has spoken are precisely identical." The Emperor further asked the Dharma Master: "The Buddha was the King of Great Compassion. When he appeared in the world at that time, why did his transformation not reach this land?" The Dharma Master replied: "The country of Kapilavastu is at the center of the ten billion suns and moons of the great trichiliocosm; all Buddhas of the three periods of time are born there. Heavenly beings, dragons, ghosts, and spirits with the power of vow and practice are likewise all born there to receive the Buddha's True Dharma, and all attain awakening. Sentient beings in other places have no karmic connection to move the Buddha, so the Buddha did not go there. Though he did not go to those places at that time, his radiance reached all of them. For those reached by the radiance, either five hundred years or beyond a thousand years after the Buddha's nirvāṇa, there will always be sages to transmit the sounds of the Buddha's teachings and transform them." Emperor Ming said: "The Dharma Master's statement that beyond a thousand years there would be the sounds of his teachings is also identical with the Zhoushu yiji." According to what the Great Lineage Dharma Master Dharmottara of the Qi state replied to the various Dharma masters of the Koguryŏ state: The Buddha was born on the eighth day of the fourth month in the twenty-fourth year of King Zhao of Zhou, and entered parinirvāṇa on the fifteenth day of the second month in the fifth year of King Xiao of Zhou.