Now the Buddha wanted to tell other people how to become wise, good and do service to others. On the fiftieth day the Buddha thought
“Now Asita, Alara and Uddaka are dead. I cannot tell them what I know. But my friends – Kondanna, Bhaddiya, Wappa, Mahanama and Assaji are in Benares. I must go there and preach to them.”
Then He set out to walk to Benares about a hundred miles to tell them what He had found. And wandering day after day from place to place, at last one evening, He came near the grove where those five ascetics were staying. This grove was called the “Deer Park”.
They saw Him coming towards them and one said to another,
“Look yonder! There is that ascetic Gotama coming here – a luxury-loving fellow who gave up fasting and fell back into a life of ease and comfort. Don’t let us speak to Him! Don’t let use show Him any respect! Let nobody go and offer to take His bowl or His extra robe from Him. We’ll just leave a mat there for Him to sit on if He wants to, and if He doesn’t want, He can stand. Who is going to attend on a good-for-nothing ascetic like Him!”
However, as the Buddha came nearer and nearer, they began to notice that somehow He was not the same as He used to be in the days when they had lived with Him and studied under Him. Now there was something about Him, something noble and majestic such as they never had seen before. And almost in spite of themselves, before they well knew what they were doing, they had forgotten all they had just agreed on as to how they were going to receive Him. And one was hastening forward to meet Him, and respectfully taking His bowl and robe from Him, another busily preparing a seat for Him, while a third hurried off and brought Him water to was His feet.
After He had taken the seat the Buddha spoke to them and said:
“Listen, ascetics. I have found the way to deathlessness. Let me tell you. Let me teach you. And if you listen and learn and practice as I tell you, very soon you will know for yourselves not in some future life but here and now in this present lifetime that what I say is true. You will realize for yourselves the state that is beyond all living and death.”
Naturally the five ascetics were very much astonished to hear their old master and teacher talking like this. They had seen Him giving up His hard life of fasting; they had seen Him stop from all efforts to find the Truth, and here He was actually coming to them and telling them that He had found the Truth! They simply did not believe Him; and they told Him so.
“Why friend Gotama,
said they,
“when we were living with you, you practiced all sorts of stern bodily mortifications such as were practiced by no other ascetic we ever heard of in the whole of India, and that was why we took you for our master and teacher. Yet with all you did, you never found out the Truth you wanted to find. How is it possible you can have found it now when you are living a life of luxury, have ceased from striving, and have turned to live in ease and comfort?”
But the Buddha replied,
“You are mistaken, ascetics. I have not given up all efforts. I am not living a life of selfindulgence and idle comfort and ease. Listen to me. I really have attained supreme knowledge and insight. And I can teach it to you so that you also may attain it and possess it for yourselves.”
When the five monks were willing to listen to Him, He delivered His first sermon to these five ascetics. Here in this sermon, the Buddha advised his followers to avoid two extremes such as self-indulgence and self-torture and to practice his teachings. He also advised them to understand the four Noble Truths and to practice the Nobel Path, or to lead a Buddhist way of life.
