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[Alexandr Korol]

The Bodhisattva remained unshakable, and the god of evil Mara retreated. “In the evening under the tree sat Gautama, and in the morning of the next day, from that seat arose the Buddha.”” It’s exactly like how Mara torments me. “Although the Four Noble Truths have a certain logical meaning, the canonical texts of Buddhism emphasize that they were not discovered by the Buddha through rationalistic thinking. While he was in a state of deep meditation, these truths “rose up to him from the very depths of his being.” The Buddha perceived the truths through “direct knowledge,” accessible to practitioners of yogic exercises; he chose the truths as the object of his concentration and, plunging deeply into their contemplation, gained the ability to “see them directly.” In the “Mahavagga Sutta,” it is told that the Buddha reflected on the Law he had discovered for seven days (according to other sources — four weeks or seven weeks). And doubts began to visit him: was there even one person on Earth capable of deeply understanding this teaching? Only after the intervention of the god Brahma Sahampati was the decision made that it was possible to preach the truths and teach them. The Enlightened One went to the Deer Park on the outskirts of the place called Sarnath (also known in Pali as Isipatana and in Sanskrit as Rishipatana — “The Place of Holy Sages”), near the city of Varanasi. There he found the five ascetics with whom he had practiced earlier and who had left him, and he gave them his first sermon about the Four Noble Truths. This speech of the Buddha made a significant impression on the ascetics, after which they became the first members of the Buddhist monastic community. The monastic community together with the Buddha and the Dharma (the Law, the Teaching) make up the “Three Jewels” (Triratna) — the three objects of veneration for Buddhists. Two gazelles also listened to the first sermon, and they later became symbols of the Buddhist teaching: two gazelles are depicted on either side of the “Wheel of the Teaching” (Dharmachakra), the eight spokes of which symbolize the eight stages of the Buddhist Noble Path. Later, the Buddha’s first sermon was formalized as the “Dharmachakra Pravartana Sutra.” This text notes that one of the five monks named Kaundinya, upon hearing the Buddha’s first sermon, attained “unstained vision of the dharma”: “All that is composed — shall cease.””