Buddha's First Sermon at Sarnath: The Deer Park Discourse

The Buddha’s first sermon, delivered at the Deer Park in Sarnath near Varanasi, is the moment when Buddhism as a teaching began. A few weeks after his enlightenment, traditionally around 528 BC though the real date is uncertain, the Buddha explained the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path to five former companions. Buddhists call it the “first turning of the wheel of the Dharma”, and Sarnath grew into one of the most important religious sites in India.

From Bodh Gaya to the Deer Park

According to the Pali texts, after his awakening under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, the Buddha spent several weeks in meditation nearby and at first doubted whether others could grasp what he had understood. Tradition says he was persuaded to teach, and he thought first of his former teachers, who had died, and then of the five ascetics who had shared his years of fasting.

They were staying at Isipatana, a deer park outside Varanasi, then the capital of the kingdom of Kasi. The Buddha walked there, a journey of some 250 km. When the five saw him coming, they agreed not to greet him, because he had given up extreme austerity, but according to the story they were won over by his bearing and listened.

The Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths

The sermon is preserved as the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, “the discourse setting in motion the wheel of the Dhamma”, in the Samyutta Nikaya of the Pali Canon, with versions in other early collections. It opens by rejecting two extremes: devotion to sensual pleasure, which the Buddha called low and unprofitable, and devotion to self-torment, which he called painful and equally unprofitable. Between them lay a Middle Way leading to insight, calm and nirvana.

He then set out the Four Noble Truths. The first is dukkha: life as ordinarily lived is marked by suffering or unsatisfactoriness, including birth, ageing, sickness, death and separation from what we love. The second is that suffering arises from craving, or thirst, for pleasure, for existence and for non-existence. The third is that suffering ends when craving ceases completely. The fourth is the path that leads to that end.

That path is the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Traditional teachers group these into three trainings in wisdom, ethical conduct and meditation.

The first monks

The texts say that as the Buddha spoke, Kondanna, the eldest of the five, gained a clear understanding that whatever arises must also pass away. The Buddha remarked that Kondanna had understood, and he became known as Annata Kondanna, “Kondanna who knows”. He asked to be ordained and became the first Buddhist monk. Over the following days the other four, Vappa, Bhaddiya, Mahanama and Assaji, reached the same understanding.

A few days later the Buddha gave a second discourse, the Anattalakkhana Sutta, on the characteristic of non-self, teaching that none of the elements of body and mind is a permanent self. According to tradition, all five then became arahants, fully liberated. Soon afterwards Yasa, the son of a rich merchant of Varanasi, joined them with dozens of his friends, and the Buddha sent his first disciples out to teach “for the welfare of the many”.

The wheel and the deer

The first sermon gave Buddhism one of its most lasting symbols. The image of a wheel, the dharmachakra, stands for the teaching set in motion at Sarnath, and in early Indian art, before the Buddha was shown in human form, a wheel on a pillar or throne could represent him preaching. Reliefs at sites such as Sanchi and Bharhut use it in this way.

Two deer lying on either side of a wheel recall the Deer Park itself. This emblem still crowns the roofs of many Tibetan and Himalayan monasteries. In sculpture, the Buddha is often shown making the teaching gesture with both hands at his chest, sometimes with the wheel, the deer and the five listening monks carved on the pedestal below.

The symbol also passed into modern national life. The 24-spoked wheel on the abacus of the Ashokan lion capital from Sarnath, known as the Ashoka Chakra, was placed at the centre of the flag of India, adopted in 1947.

Sarnath after the Buddha

Sarnath became a centre of Buddhist monasticism. In the 3rd century BC the emperor Ashoka built a stupa there, now called the Dharmarajika Stupa, and set up a polished sandstone pillar topped by four lions. That capital, now in the Sarnath Museum, became the State Emblem of India in 1950 and is covered in its own article on the Lion Capital of Ashoka.

Under the Gupta dynasty, in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, Sarnath was a major workshop of Buddhist art. Its best-known product is the seated Buddha in the teaching gesture (dharmachakra mudra), carved in fine Chunar sandstone, also in the Sarnath Museum. The Dhamek Stupa, a solid cylinder about 43 metres high and 28 metres across, was rebuilt in this period on the traditional spot of the first sermon.

The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang visited in the 7th century and described some 30 monasteries housing about 1,500 monks. Monastic life continued into the 12th century, when Queen Kumaradevi, wife of the Gahadavala king Govindachandra, endowed a large monastery. Sarnath declined after the Turkic conquests of the Ganges valley in the 1190s, and its monasteries were abandoned.

Rediscovery and modern revival

In the 1790s workmen employed by Jagat Singh, a minister of the ruler of Benares, dismantled the Dharmarajika Stupa for building material, finding a relic casket in the process. The incident drew British attention to the site. Alexander Cunningham excavated in the 1830s, and later digs, including those led by Friedrich Oertel in 1904–1905, uncovered the Ashokan pillar and its lion capital, along with many sculptures.

Modern Buddhist life returned in the 20th century. The Maha Bodhi Society, founded by the Sri Lankan reformer Anagarika Dharmapala, opened the Mulagandhakuti Vihara temple in 1931. Monasteries built by communities from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, Japan, China and Myanmar now surround the ancient remains.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 528 BC (or later): The Buddha gives his first sermon at the Deer Park (traditional date; many scholars prefer the 5th century BC).
• 3rd century BC: Ashoka builds a stupa and erects a pillar with the lion capital at Sarnath.
• 5th–6th century AD: Gupta-era sculptures are carved and the Dhamek Stupa takes its present form.
• 630s: Xuanzang describes about 1,500 monks living at Sarnath.
• 12th century: Queen Kumaradevi founds a large monastery.
• 1790s: The Dharmarajika Stupa is dismantled for building stone.
• 1904–1905: Excavations uncover the Ashokan pillar and lion capital.
• 1931: The Mulagandhakuti Vihara is inaugurated by the Maha Bodhi Society.

Why it matters

The first sermon at Sarnath contains the core of the Buddha’s teaching, and Buddhists of every tradition still return to its words. It turned a single awakened teacher into a community, the Sangha, which carried his ideas across Asia. The ruins and museum at Sarnath preserve some of the finest Mauryan and Gupta art and remain a place of pilgrimage today.