First Sermon- Buddhist EventEvent"Turning of the Dharma Wheel"

Brahma's Plea

After his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, the Buddha sat in silence for forty-nine days. The truth he had realized, he concluded, was too subtle to teach. No one would understand. The Ariyapariyesana Sutta records that Brahma Sahampati descended and stood before him. "There are beings with only a little dust in their eyes," Brahma said. "They will be lost without the dharma. Let the Blessed One teach."

The Buddha surveyed the world and consented. He looked first for his two former meditation teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. Both had recently died. Then he thought of five ascetics who had once been his companions and were now practicing at Isipatana, near Varanasi. He set out on foot. The distance was roughly a hundred and fifty miles.

The Deer Park

Isipatana means "where the sages fell," after a tradition that solitary realizers once descended from the sky at this spot. Its association with deer has a separate origin. A Jataka tale tells of a former life in which the Bodhisattva was born as a deer king. When the king of Varanasi came to hunt, the deer king offered his own body in place of a pregnant doe from his herd. The human king, shamed, granted protection to every deer in the park. The dharma wheel flanked by two kneeling deer, the symbol above the doors of Buddhist monasteries, remembers this story.

The Five Who Left

Kondanna, Bhaddiya, Vappa, Mahanama, and Assaji had practiced at Siddhartha's side for six years in the forests near Uruvela, starving themselves in pursuit of liberation. Kondanna, the eldest, was a Brahmin who had attended the infant Siddhartha's naming ceremony. Of eight court seers assembled that day, seven predicted the child would become either a great king or a buddha. Kondanna alone said there was no choice to make: the prince would awaken.

When Siddhartha abandoned extreme austerity and accepted a bowl of rice milk from the village woman Sujata, the five left him in disgust. He had gone soft, they said. They walked to Isipatana and resumed their practice without him.

Weeks later, they saw him approaching across the deer park. They agreed not to rise or show him any respect. But as the Buddha drew near, they found themselves on their feet. The Vinaya Mahavagga records that they could not help it. They took his bowl and washed his feet.

The Teaching

The Buddha told them he had found a path between the two extremes they knew. Indulgence accomplished nothing. Mortification, which they had practiced together for six years, accomplished nothing either. Between them lay the Middle Way.

He then set out the Four Noble Truths. Suffering pervades existence, and craving is its root. But craving can be ended, and he had found the way: the Noble Eightfold Path.

While the Buddha spoke, something broke open in Kondanna. "Whatever has the nature to arise," he said, "all that has the nature to cease." The Buddha exclaimed: "Añña Kondañño!" Kondanna has understood. He became the first person other than the Buddha to see through ignorance. He asked for ordination. The Buddha said: "Come, monk."

Over the following days, the remaining four reached the same breakthrough. The Buddha then delivered a second discourse, the Anattalakkhana Sutta, on the absence of a permanent self in any part of experience. All five attained full awakening. The triple gem was complete: the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha.

Sarnath

Emperor Ashoka visited the Deer Park nearly three centuries after the first sermon and erected a pillar crowned by four lions standing back to back, a dharma wheel above their heads. That pillar capital is now the state emblem of India.

The Dhamek Stupa, built around 500 CE, marks the spot where tradition places the teaching. It stands nearly forty-three meters high, a cylinder of stone and brick visible across the plain. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, arriving around 640 CE, found fifteen hundred monks and a colossal brass image of the Buddha turning the dharma wheel.

Turkic armies destroyed Sarnath in the twelfth century. The monasteries fell to ruin. British excavators in the nineteenth century uncovered a fifth-century sculpture near the Dhamek Stupa: the Buddha seated with his hands turning the wheel, serene, with deer and celestial figures carved into the halo behind his head. The deer park is a pilgrimage site again. Monasteries stand where Xuanzang once counted fifteen hundred monks.