This has been called the discourse on the turning of

This has been called the 'Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of Law',
which was the nucleus of the Buddha's teaching. It incorporated the Four
Noble Truths: the world is full of suffering; suffering is caused by human
desires; the renunciation of desire is the path to nirvana or liberation from
rebirth; and this can be achieved through the Eightfold Path. The latter
consisted of eight principles of action, leading to a balanced, moderate life:
right views, resolves, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, recollection, and
meditation, the combination of which was described as the Middle Way.
To understand this discourse did not call for complicated metaphysical
thinking, nor did it require complex rituals. It required a commitment to
ethical behaviour, a central feature of which was that it was not based on
the privileges and disabilities of caste identity but on a concern for the
welfare of humanity. Such an approach suggests a degree of sensitivity to
the social mores becoming current in urban living. The rational undertone
of the argument was characteristic of the Buddhist emphasis on causality
and logic as the basis of analysis, particularly in a system where little is left
either to divine intervention or else to the kind of metaphysics that the
Buddha described as splitting hairs. The Buddha did not see his teaching as
a divine revelation, but rather as an attempt to reveal the truths that were
apparent to him and required to be stated.
To the extent that a deity was not essential to the creation and preservation
of the universe, Buddhism was atheistic, arguing for a natural cosmic rise
and decline. Originally a place of bliss, the world had been reduced to a
place of suffering by human capitulation to desire. The authority of the
Vedas was questioned, particularly as revealed texts associated with deity,
and this was not specific only to Buddhism. Brahmanical ritual, especially
the sacrificing of animals, was unacceptable. There was a closer association
with popular, more unassertive forms of worship at funerary tumuli and
sacred enclosures. Doubtless this relieved the austerity of an otherwise
rather abstract system of thought. Independence from deities was also
evident in Buddhist ideas about the origin of government and the state.
Whereas Vedic Brahmanism invoked the gods in association with the origin
of government, Buddhism described it as a process of gradual social change
in which the instituting of the family and the ownership of fields led to civil
strife. Such strife could only be controlled by people electing a person to
govern them and to establish laws for their protection: an eminently logical
way of explaining the origins of civil strife and the need for law.
In underlining elements of logic and rationality, the Buddha was reflecting
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some of the philosophical interests of his day. Freedom from the cycle of
rebirth led to nirvana , interpreted either as bliss through enlightenment, or
extinction. Thus the doctrine of karma and