ABSTRACT

The Buddha preached his first sermon, thus ‘setting in motion the wheel of the Law’, in the deer park of Sarnath, just outside Benares.1 Its opening statement establishes Buddhism as the religion of ‘the middle way’. The man who has left home must avoid two extremes: attachment to the pleasures of the senses and attachment to mortifications. The former is low and vulgar, the second is painful, and neither does any good. The Buddha has realized a middle way which leads to calm, understanding and nibbāna.