The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

The Discourse on Setting the Wheel of the Law in Motion

The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (“setting in motion (pavattana) the wheel (cakka) of the law (Dhamma)”) is the first discourse that the Buddha delivered after his enlightenment. I think it is the single most important text in human history. (I realize that’s a pretty strong statement, and I’m not going to defend it here, but if anyone wants to have a cup of coffee with me after class, I’d be happy to give my reasons.)

The Buddha delivered the discourse to the five ascetics with whom he had been traveling and practicing for the several years prior to his enlightenment. Those five had abandoned him about a month earlier when he decided that the extreme asceticism he’d been practicing was not getting him closer to his goal, and he took a little solid food; the monks felt that he was selling out, indulging in sensual pleasures, and they’d walked away. But the Buddha understood that they were good men, advanced on the path, committed to their practice—as he put it, they were men “with little dust on their eyes”. The discourse he delivered to them was dense with meaning; it lays out, in just a dozen or so short paragraphs, the foundational concepts for all the teaching that came later: the concept of “the Middle Way”, “the Four Noble Truths”, and “The Eight-fold Path”.

In my rendering of the sutta, below, I expand the Buddha’s telegraphic delivery a bit, to help a modern audience understand the message a little more clearly. And I’ve changed some of the traditional translations of Pali terms, for reasons that I explain in the footnotes to the rendering.

For those who want to compare the version I’ve composed with more literal translations, there are four very good such translations on the Access to Insight website, from four different translators, each an experienced practitioner and a student of Pali:

The sutta is short enough so that it would take less than half an hour to read each of those, and that would be a worthwhile exercise.

This is how I’ve heard that it happened.
Bas relief of the Buddha and the five ascetics On that occasion, the Fortunate One had come to Varanasi, to the Game Park at Isipatana. There he addressed the five ascetics :

“Monks, when you’ve gone forth into the world, there are two paths you must avoid.“One is the path of luxury and sensual pleasure, of ambition and material success. That path is degrading and bestial, worthless, delivering no benefits.

“The other is the path of self-mortification and rigid asceticism. That is a painful path, and it too is worthless, delivering no benefits.

“Monks, you can avoid those two extremes by following the Middle Path realized by The Pathfinder; this Middle Path is an eye-opener; following it, you will come to know. It calms you down, lightens your load, reveals the truth with lucid clarity; you will awaken fully, completely released from all pain and distress.

“And what is this Middle Path realized by The Pathfinder that brings vision and knowledge, calms you, reveals the truth, leads to awakening and complete release? It is a Path with exactly eight factors: right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right awareness, and right concentration. That is the Middle Path realized by The Pathfinder: producing vision and knowledge, it will calm you, reveal the truth, and wake you up so you will attain complete release.

“Now this is an essential truth, the universality of pain and distress : birth is painful and distressful, and so is aging and death; sorrow, grief, hurt and despair are painful and distressful; dealing with hateful people and events is painful and distressful; separation from what you love is painful and distressful; not getting what you really want is painful and distressful. In fact, every sensation, every perception, every emotion you feel, every belief you maintain, every thought that arises in you – hanging on to all that just produces more pain and distress.

“Now this is a second essential truth, the truth regarding the cause of pain and distress. It is craving – creating an image of something you don’t have and wanting that. You imagine something full of passion and delight; now here, now there, you crave that. You crave sensual pleasures. You crave for pleasure to go on forever. You crave for discomfort to end right now.

“There is this third truth: the essential truth regarding the cessation of pain and suffering. It is to cease the craving; cease it completely, leaving no residue. Renounce it, relinquish it, release it, let go of it: all that craving.

“And this is the fourth truth, the essential truth regarding the practical way to the cessation of craving. It is just this eight-factored Path, the Path of right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right awareness, and right concentration.

“Now, this is an essential truth: pain and distress are universal, touching every aspect of our lives. Recognizing that first truth, vision arose within me; insight, understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding one aspect of an essential truth never heard before: pain and distress exist. Now, that truth imposes a demand: it must be comprehended. Recognizing that demand, vision, insight, understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding a second aspect of this truth never heard before: the truth of pain and distress demands comprehension. And I knew: this essential truth of pain and distress has been comprehended by me: thus vision, insight understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding a third aspect of this truth, never heard before.

“This is an essential truth: pain and distress have craving as their cause—wanting what we can never have. Thus vision, insight, understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding the existence of this second truth, craving as the cause of pain and distress. And again, I saw what must be done: the craving that causes pain and distress must cease. And I knew: the craving which causes pain and distress has ceased in me. Thus vision, insight, understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding two other aspects of this truth, never heard before.

“This is an essential truth: if craving ceases completely, pain and distress will cease. This truth of the complete cessation of craving must be fully realized. This truth of the complete cessation of craving has been fully realized by me. Thus vision, insight, understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding the three aspects of this truth, never heard before.

“This is an essential truth: the way to the complete cessation of craving is through practice of the eight-factored Path. This truth—the Path that leads to the cessation of craving—must be developed. This truth, this eight-factored Path, has been developed by me. Thus vision, insight, understanding, knowledge, illumination arose within me, regarding the three aspects of this fourth truth, never heard before.

“As long as my knowledge and vision of things as they actually unfold was not perfectly clear, each of the four truths in each of its three aspects – twelve turns in all – I could not claim to have realized the incomparable supreme enlightenment in this universe with its gods, its destroyers and its creators; in this generation with its recluses and its Brahmins, its spirits and its humans. But when my knowledge and vision of things as they actually unfold became perfectly clear – four truths, each with three aspects, making twelve turns in all – then I did claim to have realized the incomparable supreme enlightenment in this universe with its powers, its destroyers and creators; in this generation with its recluses and Brahmins, its spirits and its humans. Then knowledge and insight arose in me: nothing any longer holds me here; this is the last birth; there will be no more becoming.”

That is what the Fortunate One said. The five ascetics, attending, were thrilled with his words. And in one of them, the Venerable Kondañña, the last vestige of dust fell from his eyes and the stainless vision of the dhamma became clear : “Whatever can be brought into being, all that also will come to an end.”

With that, a great cry went up from the gods of this earth , “In Varanasi, in the Game Park at Isipatana, the Fortunate One has set turning the unparalleled dhamma wheel that once in motion cannot be stopped by any priest or yogi, by any god or devil, by any creator or destroyer, by any force or being in the universe.” Hearing that cry, the gods right above this earth, in the heaven of the Four Great Kings, themselves cried out, “In Varanasi, in the Game Park at Isipatana, the Fortunate One has set turning the unparalleled dhamma wheel that once in motion cannot be stopped by any priest or yogi, by any god or devil, by any creator or destroyer, by any force or being in the universe.” And the gods above them took up the cry, and the gods above them again, and all the way up to the gods of Brahma’s realm: “In Varanasi, in the Game Park at Isipatana, the Fortunate One has set turning the unparalleled dhamma wheel that once in motion cannot be stopped by any priest or yogi, by any god or devil, by any creator or destroyer, by any force or being in the universe.”

And in that very instant, with that joyful cry, the ten-thousand-fold cosmos shivered and trembled and shook; and a measureless great light, surpassing the radiance of all the gods, filled the universe.

The Fortunate One exclaimed, “Kondañña! You get it! You really get it!” And that is how the Venerable Kondañña became known as Añña Kondañña – “Kondañña who Gets It”.

“the five ascetics”

These are the five with whom the Buddha had been travelling for the previous few years, and who had turned away from him when he abandoned the extreme asceticism that was not getting him closer to his goal and accepted a meal of solid food—some rice and porridge—from a passing shepherdess. The Buddha knew that the five, although they had acted hastily on that occasion, were, in fact, accomplished meditators who had progressed quite far along on the path to understanding, and that they would be prepared to hear the new truths that he had realized with his Enlightenment.

“The Pathfinder”

This is the term I’ve used to render the Pali tathagata, a word that has bedeviled translators. It is the word that the Buddha most frequently used to refer to himself. The literal meaning is “thus gone”, and it seems to mean the one who has travelled the path. But it also has connotations of something special, even extraordinary; it’s not just that the Buddha has travelled this path, but he is the only one, or at least the first, to have done so. The term “pathfinder”, it seems to me, conveys enough of the literal meaning to satisfy, but it also points to the Buddha’s role, not just as one who has realized the Eight-Factored Path in his life, but as the one who found the Path on his own.

“pain and distress”

This is the term I’ve chosen to translate the Pali dukkha. It’s a difficult concept; its literal meaning is “pain”, and if it’s used in speaking of ordinary events, that’s what it means: “the man was shot by an arrow and experienced dukkha“. But when the Buddha speaks of the truth of dukkha, the cause of dukkha, the cessation of dukkha, he is speaking of something much more complex and wide-ranging than simple physical pain. He’s speaking of the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of our existence in an impermanent world—regret, despair, frustration, the folly of ambition, human frailty, the vanity of pride. We’ll be spending a good deal of time throughout the course exploring the various applications of the term dukkha.

“the stainless vision of the dhamma became clear”

Note that it was not the Buddha’s revelation of the Dhamma that was significant, but the fact that someone else realized it. It was the transmission of the Dhamma that set the Wheel in motion, not its explication.

“the gods of this earth”

Buddhist cosmology is complex, with multiple heavens and multitudes of gods dwelling in each heaven. The heavens are hierarchical, with the closest heavens containing gods who are still something like humans in how they think and in their emotions, while the gods of the highest heavens are rarified beings, with enormously long life spans, living with virtually no trace of attachment to any vestige of being. Below the realms of the gods are the human realm, the animal realm, and the “hell” realms, whose residents are plagued by unsatisfied greed, continuing anger and resentment, and unfulfilled sensual desire.