Setting the wheel in motion
The Buddha went looking for the five ascetics who had left him. He found them in the Deer Park at Isipatana, now Sarnath, near Vārāṇasī. The discourse he gave them is known as the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, 'setting in motion the wheel of the teaching'.
It begins by rejecting two extremes: chasing sensual pleasure, and tormenting oneself. Between them lies a middle way, the noble eightfold path.
The four noble truths
The heart of the discourse is four truths: there is suffering; suffering arises from craving; suffering can cease; and the eightfold path is the way to its ceasing. The Buddha says each truth has a task: suffering is to be understood, craving to be let go, cessation to be realised, and the path to be developed.
As he spoke, one of the five, Koṇḍañña, understood. The text says he saw that 'whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease.' Soon all five became his first monks.
Why it matters
Traditionally remembered as the first "turning of the Wheel of Dharma."
History and tradition
What historians can say
The four noble truths appear throughout the early texts and in parallel versions preserved in Chinese and other languages, so they are widely accepted as among the oldest formulations of the teaching. Whether they were first spoken in exactly this discourse cannot be known. Sarnath was an important Buddhist site by Ashoka's time; his pillar there survives.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
The discourse says the gods of every heaven took up the cry that the wheel of the teaching had been set in motion, and that the whole world system shook.