Sarnath & the Dhamek Stupa

Seven weeks after his awakening, the Buddha walked from Bodhgaya to the deer park at Isipatana, near Varanasi, and found the five ascetics who had once practised alongside him. To them he gave his first teaching — the Four Noble Truths and the Middle Way — an event the tradition calls the turning of the wheel of dharma. With it, the sangha was born.

The Dhamek Stupa

The spot is marked by the Dhamek Stupa, a solid cylinder of pale brick and carved stone rising forty-three metres from the flat plain, its lower band worked with delicate Gupta-era floral patterns. Around it spread the excavated foundations of the Mulagandhakuti monastery and, nearby, the stump of the Ashoka Pillar whose four-lion capital — now in the Sarnath Museum — became the national emblem of India.

Dawn at the deer park

Sarnath is only ten kilometres from Varanasi, and we pair the two: the first sermon by day, the Ganges at first light. Deer still graze in the park maintained beside the ruins, a living echo of the place's ancient name. We sit in the lawns beside the Dhamek Stupa and read the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta — the very words first spoken here.