Following his enlightenment, the Buddha is said to have traveled to the Deer Park at Sarnath, near the city of Varanasi, where he sought out five ascetics who had previously practiced severe self-mortification alongside him before he abandoned that path in favor of what he called the Middle Way. According to the Pali Canon, the ascetics initially resolved not to show him respect, believing he had abandoned serious spiritual effort, but were persuaded by his bearing and manner to listen, and he delivered to them the teaching later known as the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Setting in Motion of the Wheel of the Dhamma.
The sermon set out the Four Noble Truths, the existence of suffering, its cause in craving, the possibility of its cessation, and the eightfold path leading to that cessation, alongside the Middle Way between the self-indulgence he had rejected as a prince and the extreme asceticism he had rejected as a wandering seeker. One of the five ascetics, Kondanna, is described as immediately understanding the teaching and attaining a first level of realization, prompting the Buddha to declare that Kondanna had understood.
The other four ascetics followed over the succeeding days, and all five were ordained as the first monks of the Buddhist monastic community, the Sangha, an event that, alongside the Buddha's own enlightenment and his teaching, the Dhamma, completed what Buddhist tradition calls the Three Jewels, the foundational objects of refuge in Buddhist practice.