Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha delivered this discourse on the day of Asalha Puja, in the month of Ashadha, in a deer sanctuary in Isipatana.

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha attained enlightenment and liberation while meditating under the Bodhi Tree by the Nerañjarā river in Bodh Gaya.

According to MN 26 and MĀ 204, after deciding to teach, the Buddha initially intended to visit his former teachers, Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, to teach them his insights, but they had already died and born in a place where it is not apt to preach or they were deaf, so he decided to visit his five former companions.

Thereupon the Buddha gave the teaching that was later recorded as the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which introduces fundamental concepts of Buddhist thought, such as the Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths.

[25]According to Bronkhorst, this indicates that the four truths were later added to earlier descriptions of liberation by practicing the four dhyanas, which originally was thought to be sufficient for the destruction of the arsavas.

[31][note 9] According to Bronkhorst, the "twelve insights" are probably also a later addition, born out of unease with the substitution of the general term "prajna" for the more specific "four truths".

"[32] According to Richard Gombrich, Of course we do not really know what the Buddha said in his first sermon [...] and it has even been convincingly demonstrated[note 10] that the language of the text as we have it is in the main a set of formulae, expressions which are by no means self-explanatory but refer to already established doctrines.

When he understood these truths he was "enlightened" and liberated,[note 11] as reflected in Majjhima Nikaya 26:42: "his taints are destroyed by his seeing with wisdom.

[41] According to Anderson, a long recognized feature of the Theravada canon is that it lacks an "overarching and comprehensive structure of the path to nibbana.