The Homage That Opens Recitation

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa, homage to the Blessed One, the worthy one, the perfectly self-awakened, is the salutation with which Theravada Buddhist chanting begins, said three times before taking the refuges and precepts and before any formal recitation. It is a sentence rather than a sound-formula: it simply names and honours the Buddha under three of his standard epithets, and its function is to orient the reciter before the substantive text.

The three titles are precise. Bhagavant, blessed or fortunate one, is a general term of reverence; arahant names one who has destroyed the defilements and will not be reborn; samma-sambuddha, a perfectly self-awakened one, distinguishes the Buddha, who found the path unaided and taught it, from those who reach the goal by following his teaching. Said at the threshold of practice across the Theravada world in Pali, the formula is one of the most frequently recited passages in that tradition, and its careful stacking of epithets is a small lesson in the way early Buddhism defined exactly what kind of being it took its founder to be.