The book prints no title above this chant. The name used here is taken from the word ปุพพะภาคะนะมะการัง in the invitation on the same page, and title_thai and title_pali are left empty rather than invented.

It is also printed three times in full rather than marked as a repeat, and entered here the same way, with an instruction beside it that the deputy leader begins and the others join, three times, pausing for one breath after each. The book is specific about the breath because the line is chanted by a room rather than a person, and a shared pause is what keeps a room together.

This is very likely the most often recited sentence in Theravāda Buddhism. In the canon it is the phrase spoken by those declaring their confidence in the Buddha, and it appears in a great many places, which is exactly why no single reference is given for it above.

The line contains no request, no doctrine and no promise. It is one word of homage followed by its object: นะโม, homage, and then the Blessed One under three epithets — ภะคะวะโต, the fortunate or blessed one; อะระหะโต, worthy, one in whom the defilements are ended; สัมมาสัมพุทธัสสะ, perfectly enlightened by himself, that is, awakened without being taught it by anyone.

The grammar keeps its distance. ตัสสะ means that one — the Buddha is spoken about, not spoken to. Nothing in the sentence supposes a presence in the room or expects an answer, and this is one of the reasons it can be said equally at a funeral, before a lesson, and at the start of an ordinary morning.

Its work is to mark a threshold. Said three times, it separates ordinary speech from chanting, so that whatever follows begins already inside the act rather than drifting into it. For most learners it is also the first Pali they meet, and the sentence by which the rest of the language is later recognised.