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It is recounted that seven weeks after Buddha experienced Awakening, he traveled to what is now approximately Varanasi to seek out five of his former saddhus to deliver his first sermon, Turning the Wheel of Dhamma.
Some translators term this sutta Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth. In the Pali language Dhamma means truth, the way, the path. Cakka(Chakra SKT) means wheel and the root word vettana means roughly beginning of something in motion or turning. The earliest historical record of this sermon is from the Pali Canon, specifically the Samyutta Nikaya, which predates the Third Buddhist Council.
At this first sermon the Buddha sets forth the Middle Way, rejecting both hedonism and asceticism as unprofitable and counterproductive. The Buddha sets forth the concept of Dukkha, which is caused by attachment to impermanancy.
"Birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering-in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging objects."
Samyutta Nikaya 56.11
Buddha goes on to recount that suffering is caused by craving or attachment. Tanha is the Pali/Sanskrit term.
But tanha can be alleviated, and the way is the Fourth Noble Truth. Suffering, the causes of suffering,and the treatment of this suffering came to be known as the Four Noble Truths.
The third portion of his sermon Turning the Wheel of Dhamma is a discussion of conditioned arising, or the concept of inter-relatedness of all aspects of existence.
"Whatever is subject to arising is all subject to cessation."
SN 56.11
At the end of this sermon, the Buddha states "My heart's deliverance is unassailable. This is the last birth. Now there is no renewal of being."
SN 56.11
And from this Sermon the philosophy of Buddhism came into existence.
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