Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 30-minute talk, Ven Jampa Ignyen marks Chökhor Düchen—the festival commemorating the Buddha’s first formal teaching—by tracing the vast preparation underlying this pivotal moment. He walks through the Buddha’s twelve deeds across three countless eons: his descent from Tuśita despite gods pleading with him not to enter an age of degradation; birth and princely training; renunciation at age 29 after hearing celestial music about saṃsāra’s transience; six years of extreme asceticism followed by the Middle Way; enlightenment at the Bodhi tree while defeating negative forces; seven weeks of contemplation; and the journey to Sarnath. There, he taught the four noble truths to five former disciples, who grasped the teaching instantly and became arhats. He frames the entire path as compassion in action, ripening across eons into this single moment.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2001 07 24 TW.mp3
UUID: e6e5e9db-5e4e-4d5a-8ed6-e9754520d7a6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Turning the Wheel of Dharma Short Talk (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-07-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 29.9 minutes
Words: ~3,476
So today is the what’s called the Dükar, the Chökhor Düchen, not the Dükar. The Chökhor Düchen. And this traditionally occurs on the the fourth day of the seventh month in the Tibetan calendar. And it signifies the date on which the Buddha first began to teach officially. It’s the official date of the beginning of the teaching.
Now, of course, what that signifies really is the the eleventh act or the eleventh deed in the twelve deeds of the Buddha. And in order to get to that point where a being is able to teach on that level, it requires, of course, a vast amount of preparation. Is not possible for someone just to teach these topics without having undergone many eons of prior preparation. So this initially we should consider that because everything all things which are impermanent are the result of causes, that a vast number of causes and conditions, positive causes and conditions need to be assembled in order for a being to teach in this way, to teach as a fully awakened being. And these causes and conditions in a way are represented by the twelve deeds.
And each Buddha who teaches on this level of existence in the desire realm enacts the twelve deeds of a Buddha. And those twelve deeds really begin in a way with one entering the path of accumulation, entering the bodhisattva path. And for Śākyamūni Buddha, the Buddha, the fourth Buddha of this eon, there are different accounts of how he first generated the mind of enlightenment or bodhicitta. Various presentations by different schools, different sects and so forth. But certainly there was a beginning to the path and that was said to have been three countless eons ago as a being in the desire realm on an earth like this.
And at that time, one version is that he saw a great a Buddha passing by. In fact, he heard that an enlightened being had arrived at the local village. And captivated by what that meant, he ran down to the village and there he saw this being walking along. And he was so impressed by the appearance of this being that he made a commitment that I must become like that. I must also attain that state.
Some say that that being was also known by the name of Śākyamūni. Others say that that Buddha was also was known by other names, such as Dipankara. And then from that point, having generated the aspiration to become like that Buddha, which really was the aspiration to develop that pure state in which there is no hindrance to helping any other being. He entered the great vehicle. He entered the great path.
And that bodhicitta was the path, that awakening mind, in fact, was the path. And then he practiced from that point on for three countless eons. On the path of accumulation and preparation, he spent the first countless eon. And on the path from seeing to the end of the seventh Bodhisattva ground was the second countless eon. And then the three, what are called the three pure grounds of a bodhisattva, the eighth, ninth, and tenth, took a remaining countless eon.
So in fact, three countless eons were spent on the path. And, of course, to remain dedicated for that period of time indicates the strength of determination and the strength of compassion for other beings. In fact, all Buddhas require in order to complete the path. And then in a final life, before taking rebirth on earth as Śākyamūni Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, Śākyamūni was born in Tuśita, Ganden Chödzin. This realm within the desire realm, it’s a divine realm within the desire realm.
There he took birth as the regent. And he took the regency of that realm from Kāśyapa Buddha who then descended to earth and then remained there. And then he himself remained there for a period as the regent. And then when he he noticed that the time was right, that the signs were right, he decided to take rebirth on earth. And to the opposition, it said of the of the deities, the gods who lived in that particular realm.
They pleaded with him not to go. In fact, they told him, don’t go to the earth. Don’t take rebirth on earth at this particular point because the earth is pervaded by the by difficult conditions. In fact, the time of the five degenerations. And so please don’t go remain here.
Beings are difficult to tame. Sentient beings are difficult. If you go there, there’ll be some benefit, but a limited benefit. Better you stay here. Beings here in this particular realm are much, their minds are tamed in comparison to those on earth.
And in fact, the time of the five degenerations, it’s really the time of the degeneration of time to begin with. So the degeneration of time on this planet means that there’s a lot of dispute, a lot of conflict. So because of that, it said that it’s a time where the time itself is degenerate. And then also lifespan. That at the time that Śākyamūni Buddha was abiding as the regent of Tuśita, the lifespan on earth was only one hundred years.
And then there was a degeneration of view. Degeneration of view meaning there was a proliferation, widespread proliferation of afflictive views. Views about the nature of existence that did not actually concord with how things actually are. And then there was the degeneration of affliction, nyon mong, where beings on a planet experience many different types of affliction and they’re quite strong. They’re overcome by many negative states, anger and hatred, jealousy, resentment.
These states are strong and pervasive. Because of that, it’s very difficult to tame beings. And then the degeneration of beings themselves because of those afflictions, therefore, those beings are not likely to listen or to be amenable to the words of others. So because of that, then the deities and Tuśita were proclaiming, were pleading with Śākyamūni Buddha in his previous life, don’t take rebirth on earth. Stay with us.
You’re better off here. But Śākyamūni Buddha, out of his compassion for the beings on earth, decided to take rebirth. So in fact, the first act of a Buddha is to proceed from Tuśita, pass away from Tuśita and take rebirth on earth. And the second act of a supreme being is to enter the womb of one’s mother, of the mother of that being. So there, Śākyamūni Buddha entered the womb of his mother, Mahamaya, Gyalmo Langsa.
And there, she was said to have been pure for seven generations without deception or deceit. Someone with with excellent qualities. Then the third act of a Buddha was taking birth. And it’s said in the scriptures that the Buddha took birth from the right side of his mother while she was standing holding a sal tree in the Lumbini grove, which is in current current Nepal. And then he was quite aware even at birth and was even able to talk at birth and proclaim various things.
And then the fourth act of a Buddha was having taken rebirth, then training as a child, learning, acquiring skills in language. And, of course, in those days, it was studying the Veda. And the Buddha, having been born into the royal caste or the Kshatriya caste, was able to study the Vedas, which were the primarily primarily the three Vedas. And anyone of the higher caste could study these texts. These texts were religious texts of the time, which set out the methods of ritual offerings that would be undertaken in order to propitiate the gods, in order to gain good crops, make the rains come, make the fields fertile, stop one’s enemies from invading one’s territory and so forth.
The Vedas also contain a great deal about, that culture of that period. Anyway, the Buddha studied these as a child and mastered, their meaning. And then the fifth act of a Buddha was abiding with the retinue of consorts. So as a prince, there was a harem within the palace. He lived in the palace.
Spent time with the retinue of princesses within the palace. And in fact, he married during this period, he married Yashodra, and they had a son by the name of Rahula. And he was more or less engaging in the activities of the world. And then the sixth act of a Buddha is then developing the thought to leave leave the pleasures of worldly life and find the path beyond death, to find the deathless state.
And within the Tibetan tradition, note that when he was twenty nine years of age, on one occasion, he heard the sounds of cymbals and the cymbals played by the divine beings of the ten directions. And in the sound of the cymbals, he heard the following words. Samsāra is like a bee trapped in a vase. The three realms are impermanent like autumn clouds. The birth and death of migrators, migrating beings is like watching drama.
The lifespan of migrators is like lightning in the sky and the water descending a steep mountain. It rapidly passes. In attaining Buddhahood free of misery and death, the nectar will sate the torment of thirst. Remember your supreme words formerly spoken, quickly attain the holy city. So in other words, these words or the sounds of the cymbals were there to awaken him to his previous promise or previous pledge or commitment to attaining the state of Buddhahood.
So in hearing these, he developed a sense of renunciation that he had to leave the life of pleasure that he was in, within the palace, with all these pleasures and fine clothing and music and comfort and so forth. And he left the palace, cut off his hair, and then proceeded from to the town of Gaya. And then in the town of Gaya or even before the town of Gaya, he sought out different teachers or he sought to attain the state beyond death. And on studying under various teachers, he quickly attained their level. And then he decided that it would be better to proceed to the banks of the Niranjana river near Gaya and there remain in austerity.
In a way, he’d led the first twenty nine years of his life in pleasure. And now he had decided and pleasure had not brought happiness. So he therefore decided to test whether austerity would bring that state of happiness. So for the next six years beside the banks of the river, he practiced austerities, eating just a few grains of rice a day. But then after six years of austerity, he found that even though his will was undiminished, was becoming so weak that he could not stand.
He could not even remain seated upright that even his meditation was being affected. And so doubt arose about whether that was also, whether or the path of great austerity was also the way to overcoming all the various conditions, limiting conditions that we face. So then the thought came to him to start eating again. And by chance he was offered food by Sujatha, a local village girl, and she offered him rice with curd and honey and so forth. And on eating that, then he regained his strength.
And he then decided he would go off and meditate, in another place beyond the river. He crossed the river. Before crossing the river, he came across a farmer who had some kusha grass. He took the kusha grass from him and then proceeded to this large fig tree. And he sat facing east under that fig tree and then made the commitment that I will not move from this point no matter whether the flesh falls off my body, the blood in my veins dries.
I will remain here until I break through to the nature of reality itself. So having undertook that dedication, then that was the eighth act of a Buddha. The ninth act was the taming of the Maras, the taming of negative influences of spirits, of devils, and so forth. And here, while seated under the tree, initially, he was confronted by various negative conditions. It’s said that, various Maras appeared and began to hurl weapons, at the Buddha while seated in meditation.
But then because of his practice of compassion, those weapons transformed into flowers. So he was surrounded by this carpet of flowers. And all the negative conditions, the fears, the thoughts and so forth arose simply vanished within the sphere of his compassion. So therefore, during that night, continued to meditate during the three periods of the night, during the three four hour periods. And at the moment of dawn the following morning, at the beginning of the first period of day, the first moment of the day, it said that he broke through to the state of enlightenment.
And then having developed that understanding of enlightenment, that was in fact, the tenth, the tenth act of a Buddha. Then it said that having attained that state, the thought occurred to him. Well, he remained there for seven weeks. This is near the Bodhi tree. If anyone has been there, the Bodhi tree is more or less the current Bodhi tree is in a position of where the initial one was.
So it’s said that in the first week, he sat at the foot of that Bodhi tree and did not move. Various devas made offerings to the Buddha. In the second week, he walked the length of the three thousand world systems. In the third week, he looked at the body tree without blinking. In the fourth, he walked on the shores of the Eastern and Western oceans.
On the fifth week, he went to the abode of the Naga. In Tibetan. It’s Langchen. And in fact, if one goes there on the southern face of the Bodhi tree, no, in fact, it’s the eastern. There is a lake there.
There’s a tank. And that represents the Naga Mucalinda, who is portrayed in the middle of that tank or that lake. And in the sixth, he sat at the foot of the Nyagrodha tree. And in the seventh, he sat at the foot of another tree in meditation. And while seated there, two traders came, Trapusha and Bhallika, and they made an offering to him, having been impressed by him while he was seated under the tree.
And on receiving that, then he predicted their attainment of Buddhahood in future. And during this time of contemplation, he also thought about who could possibly benefit from what he had attained. And initially he thought this is so difficult to understand. The state of enlightenment is so obscure, so difficult to comprehend that very few would understand it. In fact, only those with little dust in their eyes would possibly comprehend this.
And he looked, then he thought, well, maybe there are some that are capable. And then he thought that my previous teachers but when he reflected on where they were, he’d seen that they had both passed away. And they were no longer in a situation conducive for hearing what he had to say. So then he thought the five mendicants who were with me for the six years of austerity, they would be capable of understanding this.
And then when he reflected on where they were, he realized that they’d walked to Varanasi. And so he decided himself that he would proceed to Varanasi. So therefore, left and departed from that particular place, from the site of Mahabodhi, and then walked, taking some time to walk from there to Varanasi. It was a long walk, of course. It’s about four hours by train.
So it might have taken a month to walk that distance. It said that, when he was not long out on a journey, he came across an ascetic. And this ascetic saw the Buddha coming in a distance and he was quite impressed by the appearance of the Buddha. And so he stopped and asked the Buddha, who are you and who’s your teacher? And Śākyamūni Siddhartha then said to him, oh, the Buddha and I have no teacher.
In Sanskrit, it’s aham buddho, which means I am Buddha, which means again, I am awakened. So in a way that’s how we could say that’s how the Buddha gained his name. He said simply that I’m awakened and I have no teacher. Meaning I have no teacher in this life. Meaning that what he comprehended in that life, he discovered from his own side, not through any of the teachers that he had on earth.
And the ascetic then said, oh, oh, that’s good. And walked on. Probably thinking that, ah, this person is maybe a little bit proud or but the Buddha then continued on, and he finally got to the Rishi grove in Saranath, which is just outside Varanasi, where the five former colleagues were now were now living. And when they saw him coming from a distance, they first, decided that they would not acknowledge him because they’d left him once he had broken his fast before, because they thought he was a backslider. Spent all these years in austerities eating very little, and then he started eating.
And so they lost all faith in him at that point and they left. And when they saw him coming, thought, oh, here comes the backslider, Siddhartha. Don’t get up. Ignore him. But as the Buddha approached, they even, in spite of their their arrangement, they found themselves getting up and making a place for the Buddha.
And it was on this day, it was on the fourth of the seventh month, the Tibetan calendar, that he met them. They gave him a place and he sat down. And thereupon he started to give a teaching. In fact, he just started a conversation, whereby he spoke of the four noble truths that this I have discovered while I was in Gaia, that I’ve discovered the truth of suffering. I’ve discovered the truth of the origin of suffering.
I’ve discovered the truth of the cessation of suffering. And I’ve discovered the truth of the path leading to that cessation. And then he went in more detail about the meaning of that. And as he went into more detail, then of the five former disciples, Kondanna comprehended the truth of what he was saying and broke through and became an arhat. And the other four became stream enterers, achieving the path of seeing.
So their wisdom was so sharp that they simply needed to hear the four truths, simply stated for them to comprehend the entire process of internal causation and see the ultimate nature of reality. And it was therefore called the turning of the wheel because at that point, the comprehension within the continuum of the Buddha was passed by his words, to those who were listening as if one a wheel rolled from one being to another. So it’s called the turning of the wheel, the dissemination of the doctrine. So this occurred on this day two thousand around two and a half years ago in Sarnath. And so this in fact, the puja tonight really commemorates this first teaching.
The teaching on the four truths, which is the teaching that marks a Buddha. It’s the mark of a Buddha to teach the four truths. Then the Buddha spent the next forty six years traveling around India, teaching to different people, setting out the eighty four thousand different bundles of teaching to overcome the eighty four thousand different afflictions that afflict sentient beings. And of course, to some, it appears as if these teachings are adding more to the load of sentient beings. But in fact, in setting out the eighty four thousand bundles of teaching, it’s really to clarify what the bottom line is so that people so that we as sentient beings possessing Buddha nature can begin to work out the means by which we get beyond these limitations.
So in fact, these acts of a Buddha are motivated from long before by pure compassion and come to fruition in the twelve deeds of a Buddha. But they don’t stop there because Buddhas continue to influence and intervene in the lives of beings in order to help them. So anyway, this is just a very brief outline of what this particular event commemorates tonight. It’s called the turning of the wheel. And in that, we’re reflecting on the kindness of Śākyamūni Buddha because without his kindness, without his compassion, then we would not, of course, be celebrating this particular deed of turning the wheel of Dharma.