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Āsāḷha pūjā is a buddhist festival (pūjā)
held to commemorate a discourse attributed to Gotama as the first discourse given
by him after his awakening. It sometimes called 'Dhamma day'.
Theravādin buddhists observe the 15th day of the waxing moon in the month
ofāsāḷha (corresponding to June-July), as the day when
Gotama gave this discourse.
The ascetic Gotama (c. 480-400 BCE) had come to a realization that liberation
from the suffering that exists in life follows from overcoming the āsavas,
'taints' or 'corruptions' – sense-desire, desire for eternal existence, and
ignorance. Buddhist tradition says he achieved this awakening when he was 35,
while meditating in the Uruvelā forest near the village of Senānīgāma
(in Magadha, today's Bihar). The year was around 445 BCE. Indians
in those days used a number of epithets to describe exceptionally holy men, including
a jina, 'conqueror', a tathāgata, 'one who is in a good
way', and an arahant, 'worthy one'.
This arahant initially hesitated about teaching about the insights that he
had come to. However, Gotama decided to share his insights with a group of 5 friends,
also ascetics. They were staying near Bāraṇāsī (Varanasi,
in today's Uttar Pradesh). It took him 2 months on foot to walk there. He found
them in a forested area known as a deer park (Migadāya) because of the deer
roaming freely, at Isipatana (today's Sārnāth), some 10 kilometers north
of Bārāṇasī.
The discourse he reportedly gave is known as the Dhammacakkappavattana
sutta, meaning the 'discourse on setting in motion the wheel of Dhamma'.
(Dhamma here means Gotama's teachings on the human condition.) It has two significances
in the history of buddhism. One, it began Gotama's 45-year teaching career. Two,
it occasioned the founding of the buddhist monastic order (at that stage, of men
only), because after the discourse one of the other 5 ascetics, Koṇḍañña,
asked to join with Gotama in a new community (saṅgha) of ascetics.
This group was distinct and separate from the orthodox brahmins and sannyasins
of the dominant Vedic brahmanical religion (which, over 500 later years later,
evolved into hinduism), and from other heterodox ascetics who rejected brahmanism
(the jains and ājīvikas).
While this sutta is claimed to be Gotama's first address, it is not
mentioned in the oldest biography in existence, the Ariyapariyesana
sutta.
'… here we have no Suddhodana, no Mahāmāyā, no Mahāpajāpatī
Gotamī, no Yasodharā and Rāhula, no pleasure palace, no women of
the harem, no four signs, no Channa, no renunciatory fanfare, no practice of the
austerities, no Sujātā's rice-milk, no Māra's army at the Bodhi
tree, no three watches of the night, no seven weeks after Enlightenment, no text
of the First Sermon (replaced with the heap of snares, Frame IV!).' (Jonathan
Walters, 'Suttas as history: four approaches to the Sermon on the noble quest',
1999)
That sutta reports that his first discourse was a parable about the
snares of sensual passions.
One of the aspects of the 'Dhammacakkappavattana sutta' that indicates it was
not Gotama's first discourse is its use of the term ariyasaccaṃ,
translated as 'noble truth', to describe the 4 themes early buddhists used to
summarize his teaching. However, the terms 'noble' and 'truth' were probably not
used in the original formulation of these themes - which was idaṃ dukkhaṃ
ayaṃ dukkhasamudayo ayaṃ dukkhanirodho ayaṃ dukkhanirodhagāminī,
as found in the Bhayabherava
sutta (K R Norman, 'The four noble truths: a problem of Pāli syntax',
1982).
The 'Dhammacakkappavattana sutta' also has a humble place in his published
collected works: it appears toward the end of the third volume (Saṃyutta
Nikāya) of collected suttas. It was assigned the status of
being the first discourse by the monks who composed the buddhist texts on monastic
discipline (Vinaya) some centuries later.
Richard Gombrich (in Theravāda buddhism) comments:
'Of course we do not know what the Buddha said in his first sermon
- no one was there with shorthand or a tape recorder - and it has even been convincingly
demonstrated that the language of the text as we have it is in the main a set
of formulae, expressions of which are by no means self-explanatory but refer to
already established doctrines. Nevertheless, the compilers of the Canon put in
the first sermon what they knew to be the very essence of the Buddha's Enlightenment.
That Buddhism is "the Middle Way" became its Leitmotiv.'
Rupert Gethin (in The buddhist path to awakening) comments:
'What is taught by the Buddha is truly a spiritual life (brahma-cariya)
in that it is free of vulgar sensual indulgence, on the other hand it is distinct
from what Bronkhorst characterizes as the old severely ascetic main stream meditation
tradition. From the point of view of the Bārāṇasī discourse,
this is now superseded by the new middle way. What is important about the first
discourse is the "middleness" of what the Buddha teaches. From this point of view,
the ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo is largely incidental to
the discourse. True the eight-factored path here represents the "middle way",
but this is simply because, as we shall see, the ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko
maggo often in the Nikāyas epitomizes the totality of the spiritual
life as taught by the Buddha, and not because it is the middle way per se.
What I have just said seems to be borne out by the fact that when we turn to the
Nikāyas as a whole the theme of the ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko
maggo as the middle way between sensual indulgence and self-torment is not
especially outstanding. Aside from the first discourse, the middle way between
sensual indulgence and self-torment appears to be mentioned in only four passages.'
Āsāḷhā indicates the start of the rains-residence
for buddhist monks and nuns. They take up rains-residence on the day after āsāḷhā,
or a month later (Sāvaṇa), and continue it for the following
3 months corresponding to the wet season in tropical Asia. The Pāli word
for a year, which is also the word for a rainy season, is vassa.
This practice began in the time of Gotama himself, and was a custom of all
wandering mendicants (paribbājakas) in north India at that time,
necessitated by the extreme difficulty of travel when there was heavy rain and
flooding. Later monastic tradition has it that Gotama instructed his followers
not to wander during the wet season after lay people had compared his followers
less favorably to his rivals the jains.
Initially, buddhist mendicants stayed put in places mostly on their own. But
in time they began to group together and stake out the places they stayed at,
as monastic camps (āvāsas). These camps were not monasteries,
which did not develop until over 300 years after Gotama's death. But they were
settlements (albeit impermanent) and they came to be collective in nature. In
this way, 'The transition from the eremetical to the cenobitical manner of life
was brought about by the institution of Vassa.' (Sukumar Dutt, Early buddhist
monachism 600 BC - 100 BC, 1924)
We don't know when wanderers decided to stay in one place on a more-or-less
permanent basis, or when the majority of them did; '... although it seems
virtually certain that this did not occur on any scale until well after Aśoka
and probably nearer to the beginning of the Common Era.' (Gregory Schopen, 'Cross-dressing
with the dead: asceticism, ambivalence, and institutional values in an Indian
monastic code', 2007) In the period between the Moriya empire (ended 185 BCE)
and Gupta empire (started 319 CE), buddhist communities 'came to be fully
monasticized, permanently housed, landed, propertied, and—to judge by almost
any standard—very wealthy.'
Even before monasticism replaced wandering, the collective life in the early
rains-resident camps allowed the buddhist mendicants to develop buddhist doctrines.
'The old commentary on the Pātimokkha, the formulation of Buddhist
tenets (e.g. Sattatimsa bodhapakkiyā dhammā), the development
of the idea of the eternity of Buddha's religion by connecting it with Brāhmanical
mythological materials, the didactic refashioning of current folklore (found often
in the Pitakas without the Jātaka setting, to point a moral
only), in the light of the world-wide theory of metempsychosis, the invention
of anecdotal stories and reshaping of traditions about Buddha for the purpose
of using the authority of his name to support new rules or old practices, which
led ultimately to the remoulding of the legendary setting of the whole of Buddhist
literature, the hymns of the Theras and the Theris, the Dhammapada, Udāna,
etc.—all these were the work of the primitive āvāsas.' (Dutt, Early
buddhist monachism)
Āsāḷha pūjā is an uposatha
day, and many lay buddhists observe the 8 precepts on this day. These commitments,
sikkhāpadas, are training rules in behavior to underpin the development
of wisdom and meditative practice. The 8 precepts are optional and voluntary;
they are not religious vows the violation of which would lead to being struck
by a god's thunderbolt or being rounded up by mutaween.
In 2009, āsāḷha pūjā is July 7 (Burma
and Siam, July 6 in Lanka).
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Āsāḷha
day