Turning the Wheel of Dharma

Abstract

This chapter provides a background for appreciating the ethical context of mindfulness as part of the noble eightfold path, by piecing together key passages from the early Buddhist discourses that report how the Buddha reached awakening and describe what underpins his first teaching of this eightfold path. This teaching, whereby he “turned the wheel of dharma,” concerns the four noble truths. The chapter provides translations of selected key passages from the Pāli discourses, which are studied in the light of their parallels extant mainly in Chinese translation and Sanskrit fragments and woven together into a continuous account. The selection of passages taken up shows the soteriological dimension that underlies the early Buddhist conception of mindfulness, which operates based on a firm basis in ethical conduct. The present chapter also relates key elements of satipaṭṭhāna meditation to aspects of the Buddha’s own struggle to reach liberation. Liberation by way of the realization of Nirvāṇa is the supreme goal in early Buddhiderives its ethical dimension from the

st thought and thereby also the final aim of the early Buddhist conceptualization of mindfulness practice. With the gaining of liberation, all unwholesomeness has, according to the textual sources, been completely removed from the mind. Such realization finds expression in the scheme of the four noble truths, a scheme apparently based on an ancient Indian medical diagnosis. Such relation to medical diagnosis underlines the pragmatic orientation of what according to tradition was the first teaching given by the recently awakened Buddha.