Hi Tai Shi,
Ah, that is a famous section of "Chapter Sixteen: The Life Span of the Tathagata (Juryohon)," a portion of the Lotus Sutra. It has been prized by Dogen and other Soto Zen Buddhists, and is recited in Soto Zen monasteries each day as part of the Morning Service. It is not in Sanskrit, actually, but in Chinese transliterated (in the roman letters) into Japanese pronunciation.
自我得仏来所経諸劫数無量百千万億載阿僧祇
Since I attained buddhahood the number of kalpas that have passed is an immeasurable hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions, trillions, asamkhyas.
Kalpas are vast eras of time in Buddhist teaching, and asamkhyas is another measure that is basically meant to be beyond measure. This section of the Lotus Sutra is prized because, beyond the finite life span of the historical man who lived and died in India, it emphasizes an aspect of "Buddha" that is somehow beyond time
It is not the first line of that Chapter either, but near the start. Burton Watson translates the whole passage as ("nayuta" is yet another incredibly large measure):
Of course, I personally would not take the scene depicted literally, and consider it a work of the religious imagination with grand images and wild scenes to rival anything George Lucas can come up with in Star Wars! 
However, I would take the point that it is making quite literally, namely, that they teachings are timeless, never end or begin, leap beyond the clock and cover the universe from startless start to endless end. In our own era, in which physicists envision countless galaxies in the known universe alone, and perhaps whole arrays of universes in a multi-verse, those old Buddhist authors of the Lotus Sutra and such were quite ahead of their time!
Gassho, J
STLah
Ah, that is a famous section of "Chapter Sixteen: The Life Span of the Tathagata (Juryohon)," a portion of the Lotus Sutra. It has been prized by Dogen and other Soto Zen Buddhists, and is recited in Soto Zen monasteries each day as part of the Morning Service. It is not in Sanskrit, actually, but in Chinese transliterated (in the roman letters) into Japanese pronunciation.
自我得仏来所経諸劫数無量百千万億載阿僧祇
Since I attained buddhahood the number of kalpas that have passed is an immeasurable hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions, trillions, asamkhyas.
Kalpas are vast eras of time in Buddhist teaching, and asamkhyas is another measure that is basically meant to be beyond measure. This section of the Lotus Sutra is prized because, beyond the finite life span of the historical man who lived and died in India, it emphasizes an aspect of "Buddha" that is somehow beyond time
It is not the first line of that Chapter either, but near the start. Burton Watson translates the whole passage as ("nayuta" is yet another incredibly large measure):
"Suppose a person were to take five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya thousand-million-fold worlds and grind them to dust. Then, moving eastward, each time he passes five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya worlds he drops a particle of dust. He continues eastward in this way until he has finished dropping all the particles. Good men, what is your opinion? Can the total number of all these worlds be imagined or calculated?"
The bodhisattva Maitreya and the others said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One, these worlds are immeasurable, boundless--one cannot calculate their number, nor does the mind have the power to encompass them. Even all the voice-hearers and pratyekabuddhas with their wisdom free of outflows could not imagine or understand how many there are. Although we abide in the stage of avivartika [the stage of non-regression in Buddhist practice], we cannot comprehend such a matter. World-Honored One, these worlds are immeasurable and boundless."
At that time the Buddha said to the multitude of great bodhisattvas: "Good men, now I will state this to you clearly. Suppose all these worlds, whether they received a particle of dust or not, are once more reduced to dust. Let one particle represent one kalpa. The time that has passed since I attained Buddhahood surpasses this by a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya kalpas. Ever since then I have been constantly in this saha world, preaching the Law, teaching and converting, and elsewhere I have led and benefited living beings in hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas and asamkhyas of lands.
http://jizainoken2.web.fc2.com/text/Chap16.htm
The bodhisattva Maitreya and the others said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One, these worlds are immeasurable, boundless--one cannot calculate their number, nor does the mind have the power to encompass them. Even all the voice-hearers and pratyekabuddhas with their wisdom free of outflows could not imagine or understand how many there are. Although we abide in the stage of avivartika [the stage of non-regression in Buddhist practice], we cannot comprehend such a matter. World-Honored One, these worlds are immeasurable and boundless."
At that time the Buddha said to the multitude of great bodhisattvas: "Good men, now I will state this to you clearly. Suppose all these worlds, whether they received a particle of dust or not, are once more reduced to dust. Let one particle represent one kalpa. The time that has passed since I attained Buddhahood surpasses this by a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya kalpas. Ever since then I have been constantly in this saha world, preaching the Law, teaching and converting, and elsewhere I have led and benefited living beings in hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of nayutas and asamkhyas of lands.
http://jizainoken2.web.fc2.com/text/Chap16.htm
However, I would take the point that it is making quite literally, namely, that they teachings are timeless, never end or begin, leap beyond the clock and cover the universe from startless start to endless end. In our own era, in which physicists envision countless galaxies in the known universe alone, and perhaps whole arrays of universes in a multi-verse, those old Buddhist authors of the Lotus Sutra and such were quite ahead of their time! Gassho, J
STLah
for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆
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