Heavenly Valley

Question: How big was the crowd gathered for Buddha's first sermon?

Answer: 5 people.

Shortly after attaining enlightenment in about 528 BC, Siddhartha Gautama—better known as Buddha—decided he wanted to share his insights on how to alleviate human suffering with the world. The venue he chose to deliver this inaugural sermon was Sarnath, a serene deer park near Varanasi, India. His invite-only guest list consisted of five former companions—fellow ascetics who felt Siddhartha had betrayed them by abandoning his own asceticism. But the five skeptical friends were deeply moved by what they heard and became his first disciples, helping him to spread Buddhist teachings throughout northern India.

If Buddha gave a sermon today, he sure wouldn’t have to "pad the house" to gather an audience. After the seeds of Buddhism were sown in Sarnath, his new philosophical and religious system would eventually grow into the fourth largest religion, with some 500 million adherents around the world.

Who was this Buddha—and what made him so special?

While the actual date of his birth is disputed, virtually all scholars believe Siddhartha Gautama was born in Lumbini in present-day Nepal, the son of a ruler of the Shakya clan. Because Siddhartha’s mother died a week after he was born, he was raised by his, let’s say, overprotective father. Wishing to protect his son from the miseries and suffering in the world, Siddhartha's father had an opulent palace built for the boy, a place where he could be completely sheltered from the outside world. While it is believed that Siddhartha married at age 16 and soon had a son of his own, he would remain secluded—with no experience of life beyond the palace walls—for another 13 years.

One day Siddhartha finally decided to venture outside, albeit in the company of a charioteer. He is shocked when confronted with the realities of human frailty and suffering for the first time—ascetics, the very old, the diseased, and even decaying corpses. He became enlightened alright, but not the sort of enlightenment he would soon be seeking.

The prince and the pauper

It was time for a change for the 29-year-old prince. Siddhartha decided to abandon his life of privilege and seclusion—along with his wife and son—and begin a journey of self-discovery. Finally understanding that human suffering is one of the defining traits of humanity, he was determined to find a way to alleviate it. He spent the next six years living an ascetic life—studying, meditating, fasting, even refusing water. Siddhartha even attracted a small group of followers who were impressed by the dedication of his quest (the same fellow ascetics who would later witness his sermon in Sarnath).

But even after redoubling his efforts, Siddartha realized that he would never reach the level of insight he was seeking this way. He needed something else to achieve spiritual release besides enduring pain and fasting to the point of starvation—to the disappointment of his followers, who promptly abandoned him.

You've always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself

What he does end up doing is sitting alone under a Bodhi tree and meditating, vowing not to get up until he got some answers. He remained there for several days, purifying his mind until he saw his entire life—and past lives—in his thoughts. The story gets muddled with challenges by evil spirits to what he experiences, but the gist of it is that a picture began to form in Siddhartha’s mind of all that occurs in the universe, and he received the answers to the questions of human suffering that he had been seeking for all these years. And in that moment of pure enlightenment, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha.

After several weeks contemplating the deep truths that had been revealed to him, Buddha still doesn’t know whether this knowledge could be communicated to others in words (legend has it was Brahma, the king of gods, who convinced him to teach). So the new Buddha sets off on foot to meet his five former ascetic buds about a hundred miles away in Sarnath.

The first thing he did was to reconcile with his estranged friends. He encouraged them to follow a path of balance instead of one characterized by either extreme asceticism or hedonistic indulgence, something he called the Middle Way. Then, he gave his first sermon, where he laid out the foundational principles of Buddhist philosophy. We won’t get into the weeds on the details, but they consisted of what he called the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Basically, the Four Noble Truths are that there is suffering in life; the cause of suffering is desire; ending desire means ending suffering; and following a moderate lifestyle will end desire, therefore end suffering. And the Noble Eightfold Path is like an owner’s manual, offering practical guidance for individuals on how to liberate themselves from the cycle of rebirth and suffering.

And Buddhism is born, and reborn, and …

Northern India was a mosaic of small kingdoms during Buddha’s time, an era where people were increasingly seeking a path to spiritual fulfillment. With his balanced approach, Buddha seemed to offer an accessible path to personal enlightenment. This pragmatic approach also made it easier for his teachings and ethical guidelines to spread across diverse cultures and societies.

The thing that was especially appealing about this new religion was its individualistic component—each person is responsible for their own happiness in life. Buddhism’s disregard for the caste system also held appeal for people of lower castes. Women were welcomed, too, and could become Buddhist monks. And one final reason why Buddhism was able to flourish right out of the gate: after a particularly violent war against a neighboring feudal state, the then-King Ashoka turned to Buddhism as a public way to renounce violence (he may also have thought that Buddhism’s appeal to people of different castes and culture might make it easier for him to govern his empire, but still …)

Speaking of Ashoka (who would soon rule over almost the entire Indian subcontinent), he ordered the construction of the Dhamek Stupa in 249 BC in Sarnath to commemorate the spot where Buddha delivered his first sermon—and to give a boost to the spread of Buddhism. The current stupa is a replacement that was built around 500 AD and remains one of the most important pilgrimage spots for Buddhists around the world.

"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science,
it would be Buddhism."
—Albert Einstein

A baker’s dozen of fascinating facts about Buddha you may not know:

• Lapsing Hindu?—Siddhartha Gautama came from a Hindu family, and it is true that Buddhist and Hindu religions overlap a bit. A key difference is that Hinduism is a theistic religion, and Buddhism is considered a non-theistic religion (no God who is a Creator, Judge, or overall-in-charge guy).


• Who’s your mummy—Up until the early 20th century, some Buddhist monks practiced a type of self-mummification called sokushinbutsu (which translates to "a Buddha in this very body"). To help starve and preserve their body, they would eat things like pine needles, berries, tree bark, and resin. Hey, was that the lunch bell I just heard?


• No, I wasn’t sleeping—The reason most statues of the Buddha depict him with half closed eyes is to show him in a state of meditation—and also showing an indifference to the material world.


• But why won’t it keep a charge?—According to biographers, Steve Jobs was an adherent of Buddhism, especially with its emphasis on focus, simplicity, and perfection, all of which he tried to implement in his designs for Apple.


• Maybe that’s why she couldn’t Kill Bill—Actress Uma Thurman's father, a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies, was the first Westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk.


• Losing my religion—The two largest standing Buddhas in the world were in Afghanistan—until the Taliban destroyed both of them in 2001.


• Stay seated everyone—The world’s largest seated Buddha was carved out of the rock face of Lingyun Hill in Leshan, China, in about 800 AD. About 230 feet tall, the statue’s shoulders measure 90 feet across.


• German gives Buddha high marks—The first major Western thinker to be intrigued by Buddhism was German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who viewed it as the most rational and ethically evolved of all the world religions.


• By any other name—Buddhists in Asia do not refer to their religion as "Buddhism." They prefer calling it Dharma ("law") or even Buddha-sasana (meaning, "teachings of the Buddha").


• Take a minute to stay in the moment—Creation and the afterlife are important parts of almost all religions. But one of the most important parts of Buddhism is letting go of the past and the future and focusing on the moment.


• You mean I wasn’t Napoleon?—Not all Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Many say you are allowed to believe in whatever you wish while you practice Buddhism's main teachings.


• Uh oh, did we lose him?—When scientists studied the brains of Buddhist monks, they discovered that meditation actually changed the monks' brainwaves—and they exhibited increased feelings of happiness and resiliency.


• I’m not that fat, am I?—People often confuse the statues in Chinese restaurants with Buddha. The fat, smiley guy is Budai, a character in Chinese folklore, not Gautama Buddha.

Visit the site of Buddha’s inaugural sermon during O.A.T.’s Heart of India adventure.