The three discourses

Not doing any kind of evil, Perfecting profitable skill,
 And purifying one’s own heart:
 This is the Buddha’s dispensation.
—Dhammapada 183

The message of the Awakened Ones, so stated as it is in the Dhammapada in the plain terms of good and evil, upholds the same values that every great compassionate religion shares. But the seed of good has to grow in the soil of truth; and how the tree grows depends upon the nature of the soil in which it is planted, and whence it draws its nourishment. With men as the custodians of the true, the fulfilment of the good depends upon how truth is conceived by men to be. By their acts they verify it.

A monk called Gotama, it seems, a son of the Sakyans who went forth into homelessness from a Sakyan clan, has come… Now a good report of Master Gotama has been spread to this effect: “That Blessed One is such since he is accomplished and fully awakened, perfect in true knowledge and conduct, sublime, knower of worlds, incomparable leader of men to be tamed, teacher of gods and men, awakened and blessed… He teaches a True Idea that is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, with its own special meaning and phrasing; he exhibits a holy life that is utterly perfect and pure.” Now it is good to see such Accomplished Ones. (MN 41)

So it was said of him at the time. But what, then, was the fundamental ground of that teaching? Of the many ways that such a question might be answered, perhaps the simplest and best is this: ’”He expounded the teaching that is peculiar to Buddhas: suffering, origin, cessation and a path’” (MN 56). These four are known otherwise as the Four Noble Truths. This, with the cognate teaching of No Self, may be said to constitute the fundamental ground of the teaching of Buddhas; this is what marks them, sets them apart and entitles them to the unique epithet “Buddha.”

The three discourses here presented display precisely, in all its incomparably serene simplicity, without assumptions, that special fundamental teaching, from which all Buddhism branches, and to which it all points back. The first discourse displays this fourfold Truth as something to be realized and verified for oneself here and now; the second discloses the contradictions which infect all “self” conceits; the third echoes the second from another angle.

The circumstances that led up to the discovery of these four Truths, and to the delivery of these three discourses, were briefly as follows. The Bodhisatta — as he then was, before his awakening — was twenty nine when he left the house life, where he enjoyed the extreme of luxury. He went into “exile” in order to find not a palliative but the true and incontrovertible way out from suffering.

This world has surely happened upon woe, since it is born and ages and dies but to fall from one kind of existence and reappear in another. Yet it knows no escape from this suffering, from ageing and death; surely there is an escape from this suffering, from ageing and death? (SN 12:65)

He studied and practised under two of the foremost teachers of samādhi (concentration, or quiet), and reached the highest meditative attainments possible thereby. But that was not enough (”I was not satisfied with that as a True Idea; I left it and went away.” MN 36) He then spent the best part of the next six years in the practice of asceticism, trying every sort of extreme self-mortification. During this time he was waited on by five ascetics, who hoped that if he discovered the “deathless state” he would be able to communicate his discovery to them. This too failed.

By this gruelling penance I have attained no distinction higher than the human ideal worthy of a noble one’s knowing and seeing. Might there be another way to awakening. (MN 36)

He decided to try once more the path of concentration, attained through mindfulness of breathing, though this time not pushed to the extremity of quiet, but guided instead by ordered consideration.

I thought: “While my Sakyan father was busy and I (as a child) was sitting in the shade of a rose-apple tree, then quite secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unprofitable ideas, I had direct acquaintance of entering upon and abiding in the first jhāna - meditation, which is accompanied by thinking and exploring, with happiness and pleasure born of seclusion. Might that be the way to enlightenment?” And following upon that memory came the recognition: “That is the only way to enlightenment.” (MN 36)

He now gave up self-mortification and took normal food again in order to restore to his emaciated body strength sufficient for his purpose. Then the five ascetics left him in disgust, judging that he had failed, and was merely reverting to what he had forsaken. But now in solitude, his new balanced effort in the harmony of virtue, unified in concentration, and guided by the ordered consideration of insight with mindfulness, at length brought success in discovery of the way to the goal he had sought for so long. (’”So I too found the ancient path, the ancient trail, travelled by the Awakened Ones of old’” SN 12:65). Five faculties in perfect balance had brought him to his goal: they were the four, namely energy, mindfulness, concentration, and understanding, with faith in the efficacy of the other four — the five that ’”merge into the Deathless’” (SN 48:57). According to tradition, the “Awakening” took place on the night of the Vesākha full moon in the fruitful month of May.

It was upon invitation that he resolved to communicate his discovery to others. For his first audience to whom to divulge it he chose the five ascetics who had shared his self-mortification, but had later left him. They were now at Benares — India’s “eternal city” — and so in due course he went there to rejoin them. Just two months after his awakening he preached his first sermon — the “Setting Rolling of the Wheel of Truth” or “Bringing into Existence the Blessing of the True Ideal” — with the five ascetics for his hearers. The tradition says it was the evening of the āsāḷha full moon in July, the day before the rainy season begins, and he began to speak at the moment when the sun was dipping, and the full moon simultaneously rising.

This, his first sermon, made one of his listeners, the ascetic Kondañña, a “stream-enterer,” with his attainment of the first of the four progressive stages of realization. The other four soon followed in his footsteps. The second sermon, on the characteristic of Not-Self, was preached to the same five, and it brought them to the fourth and final stage, that of arahatship: “and then” as it is said, “there were six arahats in the world” (Vinaya Mahāvagga 1).

These are the first two discourses presented here, and they were the first two sermons ever uttered by the Buddha. The third, the “Fire Sermon,” was delivered some months later to an audience of a thousand ascetics converted from the heaven-bent practice of fire-worship.

All three discourses deal only with understanding (paññā), among the faculties mentioned above as required to be balanced. But understanding, in order to reach perfection, has indeed to be aided by the others, or in other words to be founded upon virtue (“habit without conflict”), and to be fortified by concentration (though not necessarily developed to the fullness of quietism). Thus and no otherwise can it reach its goal of unshakable liberation. Virtue and concentration alone without the guidance of understanding can do no more than suppress, but they cannot of themselves alone give unshakable liberation. Now the hearers of all these three discourses were, like the Buddha himself, all ascetics already expert in the techniques and refinements of both virtue (sīla) and concentration (samādhi). So the Buddha had thus no need to tell them about what they already knew very well. Similarly he had no need to expound the doctrine of action (kamma) and its ripening (vipāka), with which they were already thoroughly acquainted through the ancient teachings. What he had to do was first to show how it is possible to go astray towards the opposite extremes of sensual indulgence and self-torment; and second to describe the facts, to show how things are, clearly and succinctly enough to stir his hearers to the additional spontaneous movement of understanding essential and indispensable for the final discovery of deliverance, each for himself. (“A ’Perfect One’ is one who shows the way.” MN 70)

Now let the discourses speak for themselves. Their incalculable strength lies in their simplicity, and in their actuality. The profound truth is there, discoverable even through the misty medium of translation!

Nanamoli Thera
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