Therefore, understanding the meaning of the Four Noble Truths is the first turning. As a result of the first turning, the ascetics understood the nature of suffering and its causes. The Buddha further explained the need to go beyond just understanding the Four Noble Truths, and putting that knowledge into practice. For example, knowing the origins of suffering, we need to abandon the kinds of actions that cause the accumulation of suffering. One has a firm conviction that cessation is possible, and practices the path to accomplish this. Thus the second turning is belief in and acting on the truths.

The Buddha told his disciples that he himself, realizing the four truths, had in fact accomplished cessation, and had fulfilled the path away from suffering, and become liberated. And now he was teaching them how to achieve liberation for themselves. The existence of suffering, the causes of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the way out of suffering were fully understood, practiced, and suffering itself was ended. Thus the third turning is the realization, the result of practicing the truths.

As a result of the Buddha's three turnings of the Dharma Wheel even the least gifted of the five monks became enlightened6, and became aryas, awakened ones, the Buddha's first disciples, and the first sangha--the community of Buddhist monks. For forty-nine years afterward, the Buddha continued to expound on the Four Noble Truths and all the other teachings of the Buddhadharma until he entered great nirvana. Prior to that, he always admonished his disciples and followers to abide by the precepts (vinaya)7, to accept the Dharma as their teacher, and take liberation (nirvana) as their ultimate goal.