Dhammacakka-Pavattana Sutta

This is the first teaching of the Tathāgata (Buddha) on attaining to unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. Here is the perfect turning of the incomparable wheel of truth, inestimable wherever it is expounded in the world. Disclosed here are the two extremes, and the middle way, with the four noble truths and the purified knowledge and vision pointed out by the Lord of Dhamma. Let us chant together this sutta, proclaiming the supreme, independent enlightenment that is widely renowned as ‘The Turning of the Wheel of the Dhamma’.

Discourse on Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma

Samyutta Nikaya LVI.11

Thus I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Benares in the Deer Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers). There he addressed the bhikkhus of the group of five:
"Bhikkhus, these two extremes ought not to be cultivated by one gone forth from the house-life. What are the two? There is devotion to indulgence of pleasure in the objects of sensual desire, which is inferior, low, vulgar, ignoble, and leads to no good; and there is devotion to self-torment, which is painful, ignoble and leads to no good.
"The middle way discovered by a Perfect One avoids both these extremes; it gives vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to peace, to direct acquaintance, to discovery, to nibbana. And what is that middle way? It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is to say:

1.Right View (sammā ditthi);
2.Right Intention (sammā sankappo);
3.Right Speech (sammā vācā);
4.Right Action (sammā kammanto);
5.Right Livelihood (sammā ājīvo);
6.Right Effort (sammā vāyāmo);
7.Right Mindfulness (sammā sati) e
8.Right Concentration (sammā samādhi).

“That is the middle way discovered by a Perfect One, which gives vision, which gives knowledge, and which leads to peace, to direct acquaintance, to discovery, to nibbana.
"Dukkha (defectiveness – suffering), as a noble truth, is this: Birth is Dukkha, aging is Dukkha, sickness is Dukkha, death is Dukkha, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are Dukkha; association with the loathed is Dukkha, dissociation from the loved is Dukkha, not to get what one wants is Dukkha — in short, the five categories * (aggregates) of identity and grasping mind for clinging objects are Dukkha.
- The five categories (khandas) of the fiery grasping, including all physical and mental conditions of existence in the Universe, together with those that form the conception of identity: Form (rūpa – body, object, image), sensation-feeling (vedanā), perception (saññā), mental formations (sānkhārā), consciousness (viññāna).
"The origin of Dukkha, as a noble truth, is this: It is the craving that produces renewal of being accompanied by enjoyment and lust, and enjoying this and that; in other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being.
"Cessation of Dukkha, as a noble truth, is this: It is remainderless fading and ceasing, giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting, of that same craving.
"The way leading to cessation of Dukkha, as a noble truth, is this: It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is to say:

1.Right View (sammā ditthi);
2.Right Intention (sammā sankappo);
3.Right Speech (sammā vācā);
4.Right Action (sammā kammanto);
5.Right Livelihood (sammā ājīvo);
6.Right Effort (sammā vāyāmo);
7.Right Mindfulness (sammā sati) e
8.Right Concentration (sammā samādhi).

1) i - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of Dukkha”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
1) ii - Thus reflecting “This Dukkha, as a noble truth, can be diagnosed”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
1) iii - Thus reflecting “This Dukkha, as a noble truth, has been diagnosed”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.

2) i - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the motivation of Dukkha”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
2) ii - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the motivation

of Dukkha, and this motivation must be abandoned”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
2) iii - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the motivation of Dukkha, and this motivation has been abandoned”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.

3) i - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the cessation of Dukkha”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
3) ii - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the cessation of Dukkha, and this cessation must be realized”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
3) iii - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the cessation of Dukkha, and this cessation has been realized”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.

4) i - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of Dukkha”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
4) ii - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of Dukkha, and this way must be developed”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.
4) iii - Thus reflecting “This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of Dukkha, and this way has been developed”. Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the finding, the light, that arose in regard to ideas not heard by me before.

“As long as my knowing and seeing how things are, was not quite purified in these twelve aspects, in these three phases of each of the four noble truths, I did not claim in the world with its gods, its Maras and high divinities, in this generation with its monks and brahmans, with its princes and men to have discovered the full Awakening that is supreme. But as soon as my knowing and seeing how things are, was quite purified in these twelve aspects, in these three phases of each of the four noble truths, then I claimed in the world with its gods, its Maras and high divinities, in this generation with its monks and brahmans, its princes and men to have discovered the full Awakening that is supreme. Knowing and seeing arose in me thus: 'My heart's deliverance is unassailable. This is the last birth. Now there is no renewal of being”.
That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus of the group of five were glad, and they approved his words.

Now during this utterance, there arose in the venerable Kondañña the spotless, immaculate vision of the True Idea: "Whatever is subject to arising is all subject to cessation".
When the Wheel of Truth had thus been set rolling by the Blessed One the earthgods raised the cry: "At Benares, in the Deer Park at Isipatana, the matchless Wheel of truth has been set rolling by the Blessed One, not to be stopped by monk or divine or god or death-angel or high divinity or anyone in the world".
On hearing the earth-gods' cry, all the gods in turn in the six paradises of the sensual sphere took up the cry till it reached beyond the Retinue of High Divinity in the sphere of pure form. And so indeed in that hour, at that moment, the cry soared up to the World of High Divinity, and this ten-thousandfold world-element shook and rocked and quaked, and a great measureless radiance surpassing the very nature of the gods was displayed in the world.

Then the Blessed One uttered the exclamation: “Kondañña knows! Kondañña knows!”, and that is how that venerable one acquired the name, Añña-Kondañña — Kondañña who knows.

Here ends the Discourse on Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma

(Dhamma – Generally means the Truth, the Way, the Life, such as exposed and experienced by the Buddha Gautama. The Law or Code that liberates and leads to freedom.)

Translation of Dhammiko