Today is Āsāḷha Puja, the day that commemorates the first teaching of the Buddha after his awakening, the Dhammacakkappavatthana Sutta, or the “Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma” Discourse. Click for the entire sutta in these languages: English, မြန်မာ, Tiếng Việt, 中文
“Bhikkhus, these two extremes should not be followed by one who has gone forth into homelessness. What two? The pursuit of sensual happiness in sensual pleasures, which is low, vulgar, the way of worldlings, ignoble, unbeneficial; and the pursuit of self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, unbeneficial. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata has awakened to the middle way, which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to knowledge, which leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana.
“And what, bhikkhus, is that middle way awakened to by the Tathagata, which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to knowledge, which leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, which leads to Nibbana? It is this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This, bhikkhus, is that middle way awakened to by the Tathagata, which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to knowledge, which leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana.” SN 56.11
“Dveme, bhikkhave, antā pabbajitena na sevitabbā. Katame dve? Yo cāyaṁ kāmesu kāmasukhallikānuyogo hīno gammo pothujjaniko anariyo anatthasaṁhito, yo cāyaṁ attakilamathānuyogo dukkho anariyo anatthasaṁhito. Ete kho, bhikkhave, ubho ante anupagamma majjhimā paṭipadā tathāgatena abhisambuddhā cakkhukaraṇī ñāṇakaraṇī upasamāya abhiññāya sambodhāya nibbānāya saṁvattati.
“Katamā ca sā, bhikkhave, majjhimā paṭipadā tathāgatena abhisambuddhā cakkhukaraṇī ñāṇakaraṇī upasamāya abhiññāya sambodhāya nibbānāya saṁvattati? Ayameva ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo, seyyathidaṁ—sammādiṭṭhi sammāsaṅkappo sammāvācā sammākammanto sammāājīvo sammāvāyāmo sammāsati sammāsamādhi. Ayaṁ kho sā, bhikkhave, majjhimā paṭipadā tathāgatena abhisambuddhā cakkhukaraṇī ñāṇakaraṇī upasamāya abhiññāya sambodhāya nibbānāya saṁvattati.”
ရဟန်းတို့ ဤအစွန်းနှစ်ပါးတို့သို့ မကပ်ရောက်မူ၍ မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် အထူးသဖြင့် သိတော်မူအပ်သော ပညာမျက်စိကို ပြုတတ်သော ဉာဏ်အမြင်ကို ပြုတတ်သောအလယ်အလတ်ဖြစ်သောအကျင့်သည် ကိလေသာငြိမ်းရန်အလို့ငှါ ဖြစ်၏၊ ထူးသော ဉာဏ်ဖြင့် သိရန်အလို့ငှါ ဖြစ်၏၊ သစ္စာလေးပါးကိုသိရန်အလို့ငှါ ဖြစ်၏၊ နိဗ္ဗာန်ကို မျက်မှောက်ပြုရန်အလို့ငှါ ဖြစ်၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် အထူးသဖြင့် သိတော်မူအပ်သော ပညာမျက်စိကို ပြုတတ်သောဉာဏ်အမြင်ကို ပြုတတ်သော ကိလေသာငြိမ်းခြင်းငှါ ထူးသော ဉာဏ်ဖြင့် သိခြင်းငှါ သစ္စာလေးပါးကို သိခြင်းငှါ နိဗ္ဗာန်ကို မျက်မှောက်ပြုခြင်းငှါ ဖြစ်သော ထိုအလယ်အလတ်ဖြစ်သော မြတ်သောအကျင့်ကားအဘယ်နည်း၊ အင်္ဂါရှစ်ပါးရှိသော ဤအရိယမဂ်ပင်တည်း။ ဤသည်ကား အဘယ်နည်း —
မှန်ကန်သောအမြင် ‘သမ္မာဒိဋ္ဌိ’၊ မှန်ကန်သော ကြံစည်မှု ‘သမ္မာသင်္ကပ္ပ’၊ မှန်ကန်သော စကား ‘သမ္မာဝါစာ’၊ မှန်ကန်သောအလုပ် ‘သမ္မာကမ္မ န္တ’၊ မှန်ကန်သောအသက်မွေးမှု ‘သမ္မာအာဇီဝ’၊ မှန်ကန်သောအားထုတ်မှု ‘သမ္မာဝါယာမ’၊ မှန်ကန်သော အောက်မေ့မှု ‘သမ္မာသတိ’၊ မှန်ကန်သော တည်ကြည်မှု ‘သမ္မာသမာဓိ’တို့တည်း။
“Có hai cực đoan này, này các Tỷ-kheo, một người xuất gia không nên thực hành theo. Thế nào là hai? Một là đắm say trong các dục (kàmesu), hạ liệt, đê tiện, phàm phu, không xứng bậc Thánh, không liên hệ đến mục đích. Hai là tự hành khổ mình, khổ đau, không xứng bậc Thánh, không liên hệ đến mục đích. Tránh xa hai cực đoan này, này các Tỷ-kheo, là con đường Trung đạo, do Như Lai chánh giác, tác thành mắt, tác thành trí, đưa đến an tịnh, thắng trí, giác ngộ, Niết-bàn.
“Và thế nào là con đường Trung đạo, này các Tỷ-kheo, do Như Lai chánh giác, tác thành mắt, tác thành trí, đưa đến an tịnh, thắng trí, giác ngộ, Niết-bàn? Chính là con đường Thánh đạo Tám ngành, tức là: chánh tri kiến, chánh tư duy, chánh ngữ, chánh nghiệp, chánh mạng, chánh tinh tấn, chánh niệm, chánh định. Ðây là con đường trung đạo, này các Tỷ-kheo, do Như Lai chánh giác, tác thành mắt, tác thành trí, đưa đến an tịnh, thắng trí, giác ngộ, Niết-bàn.”
「比丘們！有兩個極端，不應該被出家人實行，哪兩個呢？這在欲上之欲樂的實行：下劣的、粗俗的、一般人的、非聖者的、無益的，以及這自我折磨的實行：苦的、非聖者的、無益的。比丘們！不往這兩個極端後，有被如來現正覺、作眼、作智，導向寂靜、證智、正覺、涅槃的中道。
比丘們！但什麼是那被如來現正覺、作眼、作智，導向寂靜、證智、正覺、涅槃的中道呢？就是這八支聖道，即：正見、正志、正語、正業、正命、正精進、正念、正定。 比丘們！這是那被如來現正覺、作眼、作智，導向寂靜、證智、正覺、涅槃的中道。」