Element wrote:The Buddha did not mention rebirth in his first three sermons.
I would say that rebirth is either implicit or presupposed in all three of these sermons.
The Buddha sometimes taught the Dhamma in brief and sometimes in detail. In the earliest phase of his teaching career he deliberately sought out those whose faculties were ripe for speedy awakening and for whom Dhamma teachings in brief were all that was needed for the arising of the Dhamma eye.
In the first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, part of the definition of the first noble truth is:
- yampicchaṃ na labhati tampi dukkhaṃ
“Not to obtain what one wants is dukkha.”
This is an example of a statement of Dhamma in brief and was sufficient for the arising of the Dhamma eye in Koṇḍañña. In later teachings, however, the Buddha states the same in detail:
- “And what, bhikkhus, is ‘not to obtain what one wants is dukkha? To beings subject to birth there comes the wish: ‘Oh, that we were not subject to birth! That birth would not come to us!’ But this is not to be obtained by wishing, and not to obtain what one wants is dukkha.”
[repeat for aging, sickness, death, sorrow etc.]
(DN. 22; MN. 141)
And don’t try telling me that ‘subject to birth’, ‘subject to aging’ etc. really means subject to the momentary birth and death of the ego, for the same sutta defines these things in graphic physical terms (‘greying’, ‘wrinkling’ etc.).
In the second and third sermons rebirth is presupposed by the statement:
- khīṇā jāti, vusitaṃ brahmacariyaṃ, kataṃ karaṇīyaṃ, nāparaṃ itthattāyā ti pajānātī ti.
“He knows: ‘destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what needed to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of existence’”.
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu