Buddha gave his first sermon here, to his 5 disciples, some time before 400 BCE
The place is called Sarnath. It’s about 30 minutes out of Varanasi. The translation of Sarnath is here:
“In the Buddha’s first sermon, at Deer Park, he taught the Four Noble Truths by addressing the existence of suffering, its cause, and its end” from here
Here it is, written in Hindi, shorthand
How extraordinary. More so since my tendency has been towards Buddhism as an idea, since first being attracted to it through a multi-year buy-in with the Haight-Ashbury type hippie philosopher Alan Watts in my late teens and early twenties, so there’s a satisfaction that I lucked out with the blog name, and it now has more meaning than the actual origin, in the video below. Ride day 3 from home! Noob! October 1 2012, Osoyoos to Kalispell, 615K
Deer Park, Washington State
And Deer Park, Uttar Pradesh