The title has occupied translators for a long time. Bhaddekaratta is literally the auspicious single night, and the verses describe the person who deserves the name rather than defining the term. The tradition treats it as naming an ideal day and night well spent, and the closing stanza gives the epithet its explanation: it is the sage at peace who so declares.

These four stanzas are given in the canon within a discourse of the same name, and are followed there by a detailed exposition of what pursuing the past and hoping for the future consist in. The chanting books print the verses alone. No Thai rendering appears on this page, so the entry stands at two of the five layers and the English is my own off the Pali.

The first stanza rules out two directions before naming a third. One should not run back after the past nor place hope in what has not come, and the reason given is bare fact rather than exhortation: what is past is left behind, and the future is not yet arrived. Neither is available to be lived in, which is not a moral claim but a statement about what exists.

The second stanza names what is left. Whatever state is present, one sees it clearly, there where it is — ตัตถะ ตัตถะ, in each case, in each place. Two qualities are asked of that seeing: อะสังหรัง, unshakeable, and อะสังกุปปัง, unwavering. Knowing that, one should cultivate it. The instruction is not to prefer the present as a better object but to see it in a way the other two cannot be seen.

The third stanza supplies the urgency, and does so with a military image. The effort is to be made today, for who knows whether death comes tomorrow — and there is no bargaining with that great host, มะหาเสเนนะ มัจจุนา, Death and his army. The word for bargaining is the language of treaty and truce, which is precisely what cannot be arranged here.

The closing stanza gathers the whole into a description of a person: one who dwells thus, ardent, tireless by day and by night. Him the peaceful sage calls one of the auspicious single night. The verses never define the phrase in the abstract; they build the person first and award the name last.