Turning the True Wheel (sutra)

Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, FIRST SERMON, based on Ven. Nanamoli translation, "Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma Discourse" (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, SN 56.11)

The Supremely Enlightened Buddha (KanikaBadwal/flickr.com)

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was living in Benares at the Deer Park in the Resort of Seers (Isipatana). There he addressed the group of five.

 

Gold Buddha, Thai cave (Cdammen/flickr)

"These two extremes ought not be cultivated by one who has gone forth from the household-life [as a spiritual seeker in search of truth]. What two? Devotion to indulgence taking pleasure in the objects of sensual desire, [a habit] which is inferior, low, vulgar, ignoble, and leads to no higher good. In contrast, there is devotion to self-torment [severe asceticism], which is painful, ignoble, and leads to no higher good.

 

"The middle way discovered by perfectly enlightened one[s] avoids both extremes. It yields vision, yields knowledge, and leads to peace, to wisdom (direct knowing), to discovery, to nirvana (the end of all suffering). What is that middle way? 

 

"It is the Noble Eightfold Path, namely, right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the Middle Way discovered by supremely enlightened one[s]... 

• [Samma is a multivalent term being translated as perfect, supreme, and "right"; it also means whole, full, complete.]

[FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS]

The Buddha under umbrella (Saminla88/flickr)

"DISAPPOINTMENT (dukkha, suffering, unsatisfactoriness, misery, woe, ill), as an ennobling truth, is this: Birth is disappointing, aging is disappointing, sickness is disappointing, death is disappointing, sorrow and crying, pain, grief and despair are disappointing; connection with things disliked is disappointing, separation from things liked is disappointing, not getting what one wants is disappointing -- in short, the Five Aggregates of Clinging are disappointing [that is, identifying with the psycho-physical components of existence is disappointing].

  

"The ORIGIN of disappointment (suffering), as an ennobling truth, is this: It is craving [as one of the 12 links in the causal chain of dependently originated suffering rooted in ignorance] that produces rebirth (again-becoming, renewal of being, renewed existence) accompanied by enjoyment and lust, thirsting after this and that, craving for strands of sensual pleasure, craving for continued existence, and/or craving for nonexistence.

 

"CESSATION of suffering, as an ennobling truth, is this: It is the remainderless fading and ceasing, giving up, abandoning, letting go, and rejecting of that very [kind of] craving.

 

"The WAY leading to the cessation of disappointment, as an ennobling truth, is this: It is this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. [The eight path factors are distinguished into three categories: wisdom or insight, virtue or morality, and meditation or concentration.]

 

[TWELVE ASPECTS, THREE PHASES]

Wheel halo (Buddhism.about.com)

"'Disappointment, its origin, its cessation, and the way leading to its cessation, as [four] ennobling truths, are this.' Such was the vision, the knowledge, the understanding, the discovery, the light of wisdom that arose regarding things never before heard by me. 

 

"'They can be diagnosed.' Such was the vision, the knowledge... 'They have been diagnosed.' Such was the vision, the knowledge... 'They can be abandoned.' Such was the vision, the knowledge... 

 

"'They have been abandoned.' Such was the vision, the knowledge... 

 

"''They can be verified.' Such was the vision, the knowledge... 

"'They have been verified.' Such was the vision, the knowledge... the light of wisdom that arose regarding things never before heard by me...

   

"As long as my knowing-and-seeing of how things are was not yet purified in these 12 aspects, in these three phases, for each of the Four Noble Truths, I did not claim in the world -- with its shining ones (devas), its killers (maras), its divinities (brahmas), in this generation with its ascetics (shamans) and priests (Brahmins), with its princes and people -- to have discovered supreme enlightenment.

[KNOWING-AND-SEEING]

Siddhartha and the group of five fellow practitioners including Kondañña

"But as soon as my knowing-and-seeing of how things are was purified in these 12 aspects, in these three phases, for each of these four ennobling truths, then did I claim in the world -- with its shining ones, its killers, its divinities, in this generation with its ascetics and priests, its princes and people -- to have discovered supreme enlightenment. 

"Knowledge and vision arose in me thus: 'My mind/heart's deliverance is unassailable. This is my last birth. There is no more [suffering or] renewal of being.'"

 

That is what the Buddha said. The group of five were glad and approved of his words.

 
[THE ONE WHO KNOWS]

During this utterance, there arose in Kondañña the spotless, immaculate vision of (insight into) the Dharma: "Whatever is subject to arising is also subject to [immediate] cessation."

 

When the True Wheel (the Wheel of the Dharma) had thus been set a'rolling by the Buddha the earthbound devas raised a call: "In Benares, at the Deer Park in the Resort of Seers, the matchless Wheel of the Dharma has been set a'rolling by the Blessed One, not to be stopped by ascetic or priest or shining one or killer or divinity or anyone in the world!"

  

On hearing the earthbound-devas' call, all of the devas in the six Sense Sphere deva worlds took up the call until it reached beyond Brahma's Retinue in the Fine-Material Sphere.

 

And so indeed at that hour, at that moment, the call soared up to the Brahma World, and this ten-thousandfold world-system shook and rocked and quaked. Moreover, a great measureless radiance surpassing the splendor of the shining ones shone throughout the world.

 

Then the Buddha exclaimed: "Kondañña knows! Kondañña knows!" That is how he got his name, Añña-Kondañña, which mean Kondañña-who-knows.