The Mangala Sutta, the discourse on blessings or good fortune, is a short text from the Pali canon, found in the Sutta Nipata and elsewhere, in which the Buddha answers a deity's question about what constitutes the highest blessing. His reply is a list of wholesome things, associating with the wise and not with fools, honouring those worthy of honour, living in a suitable place, acting rightly, caring for one's parents, generosity, a blameless livelihood, patience, and a mind unshaken by the changes of the world, culminating in the peace of one whose mind is undisturbed. Widely chanted as a paritta, a protective and auspicious recitation, at ceremonies, house-blessings and the beginning of undertakings across the Theravada world, it presents the Buddhist path in eminently practical and this-worldly terms, as a graded set of good actions and dispositions that lead toward security and peace. Its accessibility and its catalogue of everyday virtues have made it one of the best-loved of the shorter Buddhist discourses.
The sutta is also notable structurally: each pair of blessings is delivered as a self-contained verse, part of why it has proved so durable as a chanted text, memorized and recited even by lay Buddhists with little formal training in the wider canon. Commentarial tradition, notably the fifth-century scholar Buddhaghosa, treats the list as cumulative and progressive, moving from the basic social virtues suitable to a beginner toward the more advanced mental qualities of one approaching liberation, so that the same short text can be read as a summary of the entire Buddhist path.