Prayer · Buddhist practice
The Nine Qualities of the Buddha
Such indeed is the Blessed One: worthy, perfectly self-awakened, accomplished in knowledge and conduct, well-gone, knower of the world, unsurpassed trainer of those who can be trained, teacher of gods and humans, awakened, blessed
ဣတိပိ သော ဘဂဝါ အရဟံ သမ္မာသမ္ဗုဒ္ဓေါ ဝိဇ္ဇာစရဏသမ္ပန္နော သုဂတော လောကဝိဒူ အနုတ္တရော ပုရိသဒမ္မသာရထိ သတ္ထာ ဒေဝမနုဿာနံ ဗုဒ္ဓေါ ဘဂဝါ။
Itipi so bhagavā arahaṃ sammāsambuddho vijjācaraṇasampanno sugato lokavidū anuttaro purisadammasārathi satthā devamanussānaṃ buddho bhagavā
The nine epithets of the Buddha, recited as the first of the three recollections — of the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Saṅgha. In Burma it is among the most commonly recited passages of all, and it is the text the Ko-Nawin observance is built on.
Source: Saṃyutta Nikāya 11.3
The count shown here is Japa's suggestion, not a rule of the tradition. Follow the form and number you were taught.
Free online counter
Begin a round, right here.
Choose your round size, then tap the dial once per complete recitation. It works in your browser, with no account and nothing to download.
Changing round size keeps your total.
ဣတိပိ သော ဘဂဝါ အရဟံ သမ္မာသမ္ဗုဒ္ဓေါ ဝိဇ္ဇာစရဏသမ္ပန္နော သုဂတော လောကဝိဒူ အနုတ္တရော ပုရိသဒမ္မသာရထိ သတ္ထာ ဒေဝမနုဿာနံ ဗုဒ္ဓေါ ဘဂဝါ။
Itipi so bhagavā arahaṃ sammāsambuddho vijjācaraṇasampanno sugato lokavidū anuttaro purisadammasārathi satthā devamanussānaṃ buddho bhagavā
Continue in JapaOpens a preview of this practice, with an option to add it in Japa 1.6 or later. The words and round size transfer; your browser count does not. If you install the app, return here and open the link again.
Total: 0 recitations
With the dial focused: Space, Enter or ↑ to count; ↓ to undo.
Your count stays in this tab and resets on reload. Nothing is saved or sent.
What the words say
Nine titles in order: arahaṃ, worthy; sammāsambuddho, perfectly self-awakened; vijjācaraṇasampanno, complete in knowledge and in conduct; sugato, well-gone; lokavidū, knower of the world; anuttaro purisadammasārathi, unexcelled guide for those willing to be trained; satthā devamanussānaṃ, teacher of gods and humans; buddho, awakened; bhagavā, blessed. The passage is Pāli, written here in Burmese letters, as Burmese Buddhists read it.
Where it comes from
The formula recurs through the Pāli canon wherever someone recollects the Buddha's qualities. It anchors buddhānussati, the recollection of the Buddha, one of the classical meditation subjects set out in the Visuddhimagga.
How it is practised
Chanted daily, counted on a mala, and used as the text of extended practices that assign rounds to each of the nine qualities in turn. Editions differ in small ways; follow the form your community uses.
References
- Saṃyutta Nikāya 11.3 (Dhajagga Sutta)
- Visuddhimagga VII (buddhānussati)
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.
Get Japa on the App Store