Prayer · Buddhist practice
Awgatha
I ask leave, I ask leave, I ask leave. So that every fault of body, speech and mind may be effaced, a first, a second and a third time — once, twice, three times — with reverence and with hands raised and joined I bow, honour, look upon, set down my pride and pay homage to the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Saṅgha. By the merit of this homage, may I be free at all times from the four woeful realms, the three catastrophes, the eight wrong circumstances, the five kinds of enemy, the four misfortunes and the five kinds of loss, and may I attain the Path, the Fruition, and the peace of Nibbāna.
ဩကာသ၊ ဩကာသ၊ ဩကာသ၊ ကာယကံ၊ ဝစီကံ၊ မနောကံ သဗ္ဗဒေါသ ခပ်သိမ်းသော အပြစ်တို့ကို ပျောက်ပါစေခြင်း အကျိုးငှာ ပထမ၊ ဒုတိယ၊ တတိယ၊ တစ်ကြိမ်၊ နှစ်ကြိမ်၊ သုံးကြိမ်မြောက်အောင် ဘုရားရတနာ၊ တရားရတနာ၊ သံဃာရတနာ၊ ရတနာမြတ်သုံးပါးတို့ကို အရိုအသေ အလေးအမြတ် လက်အုပ်မိုး၍ ရှိခိုးပူဇော် ဖူးမြော်မာန်လျော့ ကန်တော့ပါ၏ အရှင်ဘုရား။ ကန်တော့ရသော အကျိုးအားကြောင့် အပါယ်လေးပါး၊ ကပ်သုံးပါး၊ ရပ်ပြစ်ရှစ်ပါး၊ ရန်သူမျိုးငါးပါး၊ ဝိပတ္တိတရားလေးပါး၊ ဗျဿနတရား ငါးပါး တို့မှ အခါခပ်သိမ်း ကင်းလွတ်ငြိမ်းသည်ဖြစ်၍ မဂ်တရား၊ ဖိုလ်တရား နိဗ္ဗာန်ချမ်းသာ တရားတော်မြတ်ကို ရပါလို၏အရှင်ဘုရား။
The Burmese prayer asking leave to pay respect, said before an act of devotion. It opens by asking permission three times, bows to the Three Jewels, and closes by asking that the merit of the bow carry the reciter clear of misfortune and toward Nibbāna.
The count shown here is Japa's suggestion, not a rule of the tradition. Follow the form and number you were taught.
Not counted on beads
How many times
Japa suggests three times a day. Follow the number you were taught.
Japa counts this one without a mala: a plain daily number rather than a ring of beads, with the words kept in view while you say them. Counting is unlimited and free.
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What the words say
Awgatha (ဩကာသ) is the Pāli okāsa, 'leave' or 'occasion' — the reciter is asking to be permitted to speak. The body of the prayer names the three faults to be effaced (of body, speech and mind), the three times of bowing, and then the Three Jewels in turn. The closing list — four woeful realms, three catastrophes, eight wrong circumstances, five enemies, four misfortunes, five losses — is a set of traditional Burmese enumerations of the ways a life can go wrong.
Where it comes from
The prayer is Burmese rather than canonical Pāli, and the wording differs from monastery to monastery and between lay and monastic usage. This app carries one common form; it has not been checked against a named edition or by a Burmese practitioner, and that is a gap worth naming rather than covering.
How it is practised
Said with hands raised and joined, before bowing. Whether the threefold the prayer names — “a first, a second, a third time” — means three separate recitations or one recitation that counts three bows is not settled here, and no source consulted answers it. The three offered is this app’s reading of it, not a rule.
References
- The threefold is stated inside the prayer’s own text; whether it counts recitations or bows is not resolved.
- No named Burmese edition has been identified for this wording, and it has not been reviewed by a Burmese practitioner.
Keep it, and count it every day.
Japa keeps this text beside a large, calm counter on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with a haptic for every bead and an optional bell at the end of each round. Counting is unlimited and free.
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