Four lines, and among the most often heard in Thai temples. It is short enough to be remembered by people who chant nothing else, which is a large part of why it has lasted. The book prints no title; the name used here is taken from its opening words.

Its place in the sequence gives it its job. Everything before it has been the taking of virtue — request, refuge, precepts, charge — and this is the one piece that says what all of that is for.

Three results are named and they climb. สุคะติง, a good destination, meaning a favourable rebirth. โภคะสัมปะทา, the attainment of wealth, here and now. นิพพุติง, going to peace, the cooling of what burns. The verse moves from the next life to this one and then past both, and it does so in half a dozen words.

The last line is not a fourth claim but a conclusion drawn from the first three: ตัส๎มา, therefore — let virtue be purified. That is the whole architecture of the verse. It gives the reasons first and the instruction last, so that a person who has just undertaken eight precepts is told why before being told what.