The story goes that the Buddha was enlightened beneath a full moon. The land, the water, the bodhi tree under which he was sitting, as well as the person -his body, heart and mind - were all fully illuminated by and bathed in a reflective, silvery light. He was Enlightened, literally and metaphorically.
We celebrate this moment every year on full-moon day in May - which we call 'Buddha Day'. This weekend, as we edge towards the full moon of July, we'll be celebrating 'Dharma Day', the second major event in the life of the Buddha.
The story continues, saying that…after his enlightenment, the Buddha left the shelter of the bodhi tree in order to share his discovery with others. Not that they always wanted to hear what he had to say! The first person he met along the road was a man named Upaka. The Buddha declared to Upaka that he was a world-conqueror, free from all limitations, enlightened! Upaka simply swayed his head from side to side and said, "may it be so, friend", before carrying on along his way...
But when the Buddha was reunited with five of his former spiritual friends in a wild deer park at Isipatana, it was a different story.
They got it. They could see what had happened to him. They could feel it. They couldn't resist it. And as the Buddha communicated with them, skillfully pointing a finger towards the moon of the enlightened mind, they also - one by one - became enlightened.
The Buddha had successfully communicated the 'Dharma' - the truth, and the teachings that lead towards that vision of truth. He had, to use the traditional language, 'set rolling the Wheel of the Dharma'. The old texts tell us that as that happened:
"the ten-thousand-fold cosmos shivered & quivered & quaked, while a great, measureless radiance appeared in the cosmos, surpassing the light of the gods."
Talk given by Padmasagara