I. What This Concept Is About
In Buddhism, 讚歎 (praśaṃsā, "praise") is a term of practice that looks simple on the surface but carries an inner structure. It is not an exclamation of "wow, so impressive," nor is it equivalent to worldly complimenting, favorable review, or flattery. Judging from the textual material in the two sutras cited, 讚歎 is a practice in which one truthfully extols, in verse, prose, or mantra sentences, the merits of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the noble sages, and which is often combined with reverence and offering. Its key lies not in "how nicely it is spoken" but in three things: the object praised is determinate (the Buddha, the Dharma, the Three Jewels, bodhisattvas, pratyekabuddhas, śrāvakas, and even dharma-protecting devīs); the content praised is truthful (real merit, not vague flattery); and the intention is reverent.
1. Three Verbal Forms — Verse Praise, Prose Praise, Mantra Praise
The *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* (《大寶積經》) and the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* (《金光明最勝王經》, the Golden Light Sūtra) together show that the verbal forms of praise number at least three, and the two sutras use different terminology, so they cannot be flattened into a single word:
- Verse praise (偈赞, gāthā): expressed in rhythmic sentences of four, five, or seven characters in verse. In the *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra*, expressions like "以偈讚曰" (spoke in verse to praise) and "说偈讚曰" (spoke verses to praise) belong to this type; the gandharvas (乾闥婆) circumambulating the Buddha, the deva prince Sublime Wisdom (智尊天子), and the deva prince Transcending All (超一切天子) all use this as the standard form. Verse praise is easy to remember and recite, and suitable for collective chanting in rituals. - Prose praise (散文赞, long-form prose praise): the "supreme praise" (上讚歎) in the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* is a long prose passage extolling such merits as the Buddhas' true words, their not speaking falsely, and the sign of the broad and long tongue (广长舌相) covering the worlds of the ten directions. This praise begins with the three refuges (三皈依, triśaraṇa) — "南謨佛陀也！南謨達摩也！南謨僧伽也！" (Namo Buddhāya! Namo Dharmāya! Namo Saṃghāya!) — and then unfolds layer by layer. - Mantra praise (呪赞): the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* explicitly establishes 呪赞 as an independent category, pairing mantra sentences with words of praise. When the brahmin uses this to invoke Sarasvatī devī (辩才天女), the sutra says:
若欲祈請辯才天，依此呪讚言詞句；晨朝清淨至誠誦，於所求事悉隨心。 *"If one wishes to invoke the devī of eloquence, rely on these mantra-praise phrases; recited with sincerity in the purity of the early morning, all sought matters will follow the mind."*
This tells us that "mantra praise" is not merely a mantra-ized version of ordinary praise but carries requirements of ritual purity — purity at dawn, sincere recitation, and the fulfillment of what is sought.
On terminology, it should be clarified: 讚 (zàn, "to praise"), 讚歎 (zàntàn, "praise with admiration"), and 呪赞 (zhòuzàn, "mantra praise") are not interchangeable synonyms. The Ratnakūṭa section uses the single character 讚 (as in "我所讚法," "the Dharma I praise"), emphasizing the act itself; when the Golden Light Sūtra writes 讚歎 together, the character 歎 carries a tone of sighing and deep feeling, thus highlighting heartfelt emotion; 呪赞 is a subcategory placed alongside 讚歎 in the sutra, with its own rules.
2. The Objects of Praise — Buddha, Dharma, Three Jewels, and Noble Sages
The objects listed in the two sutras overlap and differ, and must be kept separate truthfully:
- The explicit objects in the *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* are the Buddha and the Dharma, without extending to the saṃgha jewel. Its verse says:
常勤供养法，如所說中住，聞深空妙法，其心不違逆，故身常端正，亦得樂說辯。如我所讚法，以此轉高增。 *"Always diligently make offerings to the Dharma, dwell in what has been spoken; hearing the profound, empty, wondrous Dharma, the mind does not oppose it; therefore the body is always upright and dignified, and one also gains delight in eloquent expression. The Dharma that I thus praise, through this, grows ever higher."*
The subject praised is the "profound empty wondrous Dharma," and here the object of praise and the content of praise become one.
- The objects in the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* are broader, encompassing the Three Jewels (三寶, triratna), bodhisattvas (菩萨), pratyekabuddhas (獨覺), śrāvakas (聲聞), all noble sages, and Sarasvatī devī. Its "supreme praise" begins by revering the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṃgha jewels, then praises the Buddhas' merits, then extends to bodhisattvas, pratyekabuddhas, and śrāvakas. In other words, the praise in this sutra is "full-spectrum," praising the Buddha, the noble saṃgha, and the dharma protectors alike.
Laying the two maps of objects on top of each other, we see: the object of praise is not a competition of "the higher the better" but a complete coordinate of reverence. Anyone whose merit is truthfully understood — whether already awakened as a Buddha, still on the causal ground, of the śrāvaka vehicle, or a world-protecting deva — can become an object of praise.
3. Praisers Come in Many Identities — Not Exclusive to Humans
This is the point contemporary people most easily overlook. In the classical textual material, praise is not the monopoly of monastics or full-time practitioners. Devas of the desire realm, devīs, gandharvas, brahmins, tree deities (树神), and bodhisattvas have all served as subjects of praise. The *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* records the celestial maidens dancing and scattering sandalwood and aloes powder; the gandharvas riding the great elephant king Airāvata, circumambulating the Buddha thirty-six times in the sky, then descending and circumambulating three more times, after which they "touch head and face to the Buddha's feet, bow with joined palms, stand to one side, and speak in verse to praise." In the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra*, the brahmin Kauṇḍinya (憍陳如婆罗门) invokes Sarasvatī devī with mantra praise, while the bodhisattva Wonderful Banner (妙幢菩萨) and the tree deity use words to praise the Buddha.
This tells us a fact that modern people often forget: "being able to speak" is itself included in practice — one need not always speak philosophy or expound sutras; speaking a single verse of truthful praise is itself a way of participating in practice.
4. The Ritual Position of Praise — Body Etiquette First, Verbal Praise After
Both sutras show that praise rarely appears independently as "starting with just the mouth." It is usually nested in a sequence of body etiquette → offering → verbal praise:
- Bodily action: circumambulating the Buddha, touching head and face to the feet, bowing with joined palms; - Material offering: scattering sandalwood powder, scattering aloes powder, dance and song offerings; - Verbal expression: after joining palms, "speaking in verse to praise."
In other words, the verbal praise of the speech karma is the culmination of the three karmic actions (三业) of body, speech, and mind. This differs greatly from the contemporary habit of "saying whatever comes to mind" — in classical ritual, praise has power because it is built on a body that has already shown reverence and material gifts that have already been offered; speech is the estuary where this river of devotion flows into the sea, not a freestanding faucet.
5. The Content of Praise — Centered on Merit and the Wondrous Dharma, Not Lyrical Emotion
The two sutras differ in emphasis but share the word "truthful" (如实):
- The *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* highlights the "profound, empty, wondrous Dharma," emphasizing that after hearing it the mind does not oppose it and one dwells in what has been spoken; praising the Dharma itself enables the Dharma to increase and grow — "如我所讚法，以此轉高增" (The Dharma that I thus praise, through this, grows ever higher). - The *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* highlights "Buddha merits," especially not speaking falsely, the sign of the broad and long tongue, the removal of the heat of afflictions, and so on — praising the real marks of virtue accumulated by "the Buddhas speaking true words for countless koṭis of great kalpas."
Here there is a boundary that modern people tend to erase: praise is not a lyric poem venting emotion but a solemn composition narrating merit. It praises "what has been done, what is real, what can be verified" — the Buddha did not speak falsely for immeasurable kalpas, therefore he has the sign of the broad and long tongue; bodhisattvas cultivated the six perfections (六度, ṣaḍ-pāramitā) for immeasurable kalpas, therefore they have all manner of samādhis. The semantic density of praise must correspond to the real virtuous conduct of its object.
6. Self-Benefit and Benefiting Others — Two Directions of Effect
The *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* states the effects most clearly:
- The self-benefit side: those who praise the Buddha can "extinguish all offenses and produce immeasurable merit"; the tree deity's praise is rewarded with the fruits of "swiftly realizing the supreme bodhi (菩提)" and "all entering the deathless unborn dharma-gate." - The benefiting-others side: the bodhisattva's praise can "benefit sentient beings and broadly further the Buddha's work"; the bodhisattva Wonderful Banner's praise can "cause those who do not yet know to follow and study" — that is, the praise of the speaker can become the karmic condition for others to enter the path.
The *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* gives a very concrete self-benefit: "故身常端正，亦得樂說辯" (therefore the body is always upright and dignified, and one also gains delight in eloquent expression, 樂說辯). Note that "upright bodily appearance" and "delight in eloquent discourse" are placed together — one external, one internal, but both arise from the chain of premises: "always diligently making offerings to the Dharma, hearing the profound empty wondrous Dharma, the mind not opposing it." In other words, the effect is not as simple as "praise and everything becomes better"; it is a byproduct of the entire sequence of offering, hearing the Dharma, and following along.
II. A Walk-Through in Daily Life
In the sutras, praise is often performed by heavenly beings, bodhisattvas, and tree deities, which seems far removed from contemporary daily life. To walk it through the scenes of commuting, scrolling through phones, overtime work, intimate relationships, and child-rearing, the key is not "imitating how bodhisattvas speak" but seeing how the elements defined by the classics (object, content, form, intention, ritual position) map onto contemporary situations, and where they are most easily mapped wrongly.
Scene One: Morning Rush Hour Commute, Overhearing Someone on the Phone
A colleague/friend excitedly tells their family on the phone that they got promoted, landed a big client, or their child got into a good school. Most of our brains have two reactions:
- Reaction A (interpersonal compliment): "Wow, congratulations, amazing!" — this is worldly politeness. - Reaction B (inner grumbling/comparison): "Hmph, what's so great, they probably got it through connections" or "I deserve this too" — this is worldly jealousy.
The perspective of praise is neither of these. It requires first doing one thing: truthfully understanding the actual merit the other person has invested — how many late nights they worked, how many books they read, how many rejected proposals they endured, what low points they survived; then expressing these facts in a reverent, non-exaggerated manner free of comparison or self-pity. It is not A's programmed congratulations, nor B's silent antagonism, but a speech act that "truthfully says out loud" another person's real effort.
Where it is easily mapped wrongly: treating praise as "not sincere but sweet-tongued" social savvy. This is precisely what the classics reject — without the two pillars of "a reverent heart" and "truthfully proclaiming merit," it is merely social talk, not praise.
Scene Two: Scrolling Through the Phone, Seeing a Piece on Scientific Breakthroughs, Human Heroes, Cultural Achievements
A concrete walk-through: seeing an article about a scientist who studied a certain technology with unwavering dedication for decades and finally achieved a breakthrough. Our usual reaction is "wow, amazing" + scroll on.
The perspective of praise would make us pause: - What is this scientist's specific merit? (persistence, rigor, courage in the face of failure) - Can I, in one sentence or a short verse, "truthfully say out loud" this merit? For example: "三十寒窗磨一剑，今朝破壁见青天" ("Thirty years at a cold window sharpened one sword; today the wall breaks and the blue sky is seen") — this is the prototype of a contemporary "verse praise."
Where it is easily mapped wrongly: narrowing "the object of praise" to "it must be Buddhist." From the classics, the scope of the noble sages is very broad — anyone whose virtue is real and can be pointed to can be praised. But contemporary people need not deliver long panegyrics to everyone; rather, they can "silently raise the thought" in the mind, truly perceiving the merit in consciousness — this is already the inner form of praise; it need not always be spoken aloud.
Scene Three: Working Overtime Until 2 A.M.
This scene is all too common in contemporary life.
If we use the lens of "praise" to look at the present situation: - Who is the object? — Not oneself (one praises others, not oneself), nor one's boss (if the boss has not manifested real merit, praising them is flattery). - What can the object be? — It can be acknowledgment of the real value of the work itself ("if this thing gets done, it will genuinely help some real people"); it can be affirmation of a colleague's specific contribution ("that teammate held the line at the critical moment"). - The form can be silent: when the body is stiff from overtime, one can silently recall a sentence in the mind: "此夜灯光虽辛苦，愿此心力普利人。" ("Though this night's lamplight is toilsome, may this mind's strength benefit all people.") — this is a miniature "verse praise."
Where it is easily mapped wrongly: treating praise as "forced positivity" — telling yourself "be grateful for the overtime" when you are exhausted to the point of collapse. The word "truthful" still applies here: if your real state is fatigue and grievance, then first truthfully see your own fatigue; then, on that basis, go on to see the specific merit of specific things. These two steps cannot be skipped. Skipping "truthfully seeing yourself" and jumping straight to "praising" becomes the most popular kind of toxic "positive thinking" today.
Scene Four: Praise and Being Praised in Intimate Relationships
In intimate relationships (partners, parents, close friends), praise is one of the areas most easily ruined. The reason is simple: the longer we live with those close to us, the more reverence gets worn down, because closeness makes us think "no need for politeness anymore."
The classical verse "如我所讚法，以此轉高增" (the Dharma that I thus praise, through this, grows ever higher) points to one thing: the object of praise can "grow higher" only because the praiser has first truly recognized the merit in their own mind. In intimate relationships, this means: - When your partner has labored over a meal tonight — praise not "it tastes good" (that is taste), but "you stood in the kitchen for two hours today and took care of our bodies" — that is merit. - When a child ties their shoelaces by themselves for the first time — praise not "you're smart" (that is evaluation), but "you just tried five times, didn't give up, and finally did it yourself" — that is merit.
Where it is easily mapped wrongly: narrowing praise to "complimenting." Complimenting has an evaluative tone ("you're great," "you're smart"), while narrating merit is non-evaluative — it only states the concrete facts the other person has done, leaving the judgment to the other person. This point already has an echo in child psychology (descriptive praise vs. evaluative praise); the classical formulation predates contemporary psychology by several hundred years.
Scene Five: Daily Purification of Speech Karma
In the classics, praise often appears as "reciting with sincerity in the purity of the early morning" — a reminder of both time and state of mind. What contemporary people lack most is not the ability "to speak" but "a pure state of mind like the early morning."
A workable walk-through: - Wake up early, give yourself 5 minutes. - In those 5 minutes, find a real noble sage — it could be the Buddha, a patriarch, or a real person whose works you have read and by whom you were moved. - Try, in the mind or aloud, to speak a specific and truthful merit, not the vague "great, compassionate, amazing." - This is the contemporary version of "sincere praise at dawn."
Where it is easily mapped wrongly: understanding "purity" as "feeling good about oneself" or "having a strong sense of ritual." In the classics, purity is closer to "not carrying greed, hatred, or delusion" — not seeking blessings, not seeking reward, not showing off that one has cultivation, but simply saying out loud the merit one has seen.
III. Why Contemporary People Need It
1. Reverse Training Against the Attention Economy
The contemporary mind has a structural predicament: algorithms push all "evaluative content" (likes, controversies, trending topics) in front of us, while real merit, because it is plain, unstimulating, and not viral, receives almost no attention at all.
Praise is reverse training against this predicament — it requires you to actively move your attention to "specific and truthful merit" and say it out loud. This very act rewrites the direction of attention.
2. Making the Praised Object "Grow Higher" — A Reminder of the Real Power of Speech
The *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* says "如我所讚法，以此轉高增" (the Dharma that I thus praise, through this, grows ever higher). If read literally, one might think it means "the Dharma needs people to praise it in order to exist," which is clearly wrong. The more stable reading is: when merit is truthfully spoken, it is more likely to be claimed, internalized, and transmitted by those who hear it. The "growth" of the Dharma does not depend on the praiser's eloquence but on the praiser's true seeing — a merit that has been truthfully spoken is more likely to be heard by another person.
This has a very concrete correspondence in the contemporary context: much valuable content, many real good deeds, and many modest acts of devotion are drowned because they are never "truthfully spoken." The training of praise is essentially training yourself to become a person who can "truthfully speak merit" — for a contemporary mind fed on "exaggerated, emotional, decontextualized" language, this is a form of repair.
3. The Self-Benefit Side — Giving Speech Karma a Clean Place to Land
The place where contemporary speech karma goes most wrong is not in cursing but in scatteredness, vagueness, and emptiness — we speak so much every day; how many sentences are truly "truthful"? The *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* says "故身常端正，亦得樂說辯" (therefore the body is always upright and dignified, and one also gains delight in eloquent expression). "Upright bodily appearance" may not be easy to verify, but "delight in eloquent expression" can be tested in the present day: a person accustomed to truthfully speaking merit will have more accurate, steadier, and less polluted language.
4. The Benefiting-Others Side — Paving a Mouth-Gate for Others to Enter the Path
The *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* says those who praise the Buddha can "cause those who do not yet know to follow and study." Note: it is not "cause those who already know to praise" but "cause those who do not yet know to follow" — that is, to make people who have not yet encountered the path willing to walk in.
This is the most underestimated function of praise in the contemporary world: it can become an entrance. You need not be a lecturer, need not write books, need not start a public account; you only need, in some setting, to speak with one concrete, truthful, reverent sentence the merit you have seen — and that may be the very opportunity for a stranger to take one more look.
5. Its Position in the Whole Path of Liberation
If we do not place praise back into the whole map of practice, we will mistake it for "etiquette" or "ritual." In fact, it belongs in the stage of accumulating provisions (資糧位, saṃbhāra) and preparatory practices (加行, prayoga), alongside offering, bowing, confession, rejoicing, and dedication, as one of the "five gateways of preparatory practice" (加行五门) cultivated in common by the five vehicles (五乘), outside the bodhisattva's six perfections and four means of gathering (四攝, catvāri saṃgrahavastūni). Its function is not to attain the path by itself but to pave the way for the path of seeing (見道, darśana-mārga) and the path of cultivation (修道, bhāvanā-mārga):
- It orders the scattered mind (joining palms → one-pointedness of mind while chanting praise) - It causes the heard Dharma to grow and increase (praising the Dharma → the Dharma enters the mind → the Dharma becomes a seed) - It plants the seeds of benefiting others (praising merit → causing those who do not know to follow) - It accumulates provisions for the final fruit of bodhi (the effects made explicit in many sutras)
Therefore, a verse of praise is not a closing remark but one of the places where practice actually happens.
IV. Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading One: "Praise = Bootlicking / Flattery"
This is the most common contemporary misreading. The key distinctions are three: - Object: flattery targets someone from whom one hopes to profit (boss, client, traffic); praise targets the Buddha, the Dharma, and the noble sages — merit itself, not a person-to-person quid pro quo. - Content: flattery exaggerates, fabricates, and is untrue; praise requires truthfulness (the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* praises precisely the virtue of "true words, not speaking falsely"). - Intention: flattery seeks to exchange for benefit; the core of praise is "a reverent heart" — revering without scheming.
Clarification: if you find that your "praise" of someone carries an element of "expecting a return" or "fearing loss," that is not praise but flattery. Although the classics do not use the word "flattery," the contrast between "a reverent heart" and "a greedy heart" is clear.
Misreading Two: "Praise = Empty Slogans / Formalism"
A common contemporary irony: "Namo Buddha" chanted too many times goes numb, no feeling. This is not a problem with praise itself but with praise verses lacking concrete content easily falling into numbness.
The classical treatment is: - Verse praise has concrete content (not vague words like "great, compassionate, amazing"); - Prose praise has explicit unfolding (from the three refuges to the Buddhas' true words to the broad and long tongue, step by step); - Mantra praise has purity requirements (dawn, sincerity).
Clarification: numbness is often "content being worn away," not the form itself being ineffective. If a verse of praise has moved people for three thousand years, it is because its content has never lost its pointer toward real merit. Bringing this back to daily life — even one sentence of praise, if backed by real seeing, will not go numb.
Misreading Three: "Praise Is Praising Others, Not Oneself"
This one is half right, half wrong. In the classics, the identity of the praiser is one who of their own accord praises others — the Buddha, bodhisattvas, devīs, and tree deities are all praisers, and all praise others. But the *Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra* also gives "self-benefit" effects (extinguishing offenses, producing merit, swiftly realizing bodhi). These two do not contradict: the object of praise is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the noble sages, not the praiser themselves; but the praiser's merit can thereby increase.
Contemporary mapping: allowing oneself to become a "worthy sage of one's own life" type of self-affirmation (descriptive rather than evaluative) is acceptable; but the more central position is placing "real merit" on an object larger, more stable, and more verifiable than oneself — this is the mind-training direction of praise.
Misreading Four: "Praise Is for Poets; I'm Not Good with Words, So I Can't Do It"
The classical material neither requires the praiser to be a poet nor demands ornate diction. Many of the Ratnakūṭa verses are plain four-character lines; the "supreme praise" of the Golden Light Sūtra, though long-form prose, has regular sentence patterns, chantable and readable.
Clarification: contemporary people can start with one sentence. The specific sentence pattern need not imitate the classical — as long as it satisfies three conditions (clear object, truthful content, reverent intention), even a single sentence like "你刚才在那件事上的坚持，我看见了" ("I saw your persistence in that matter just now") is a dharma-accordant verse of praise.
Misreading Five: "Praise = Saying Everything Is Good"
This is very similar to the contemporary disease of "forced positivity." The classical word "truthful" is the key — merit must be truthfully praised, and faults must also be truthfully seen. The *Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra* says the praiser must "hear the profound, empty, wondrous Dharma, the mind not opposing it"; here "not opposing" does not mean "pretending not to see problems" but "not generating resistance upon hearing the truth."
Clarification: praise does not require blindfolding. On the contrary — it requires open eyes, seeing clearly, then picking out the real merit in it and speaking truthfully. This is highly consistent with contemporary pedagogical and psychological views on "truthfully and specifically describing behavior" — but the Buddhist classics predate these disciplines by two thousand years.
Misreading Six: "Praise Is an Activity Exclusive to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; It Has Nothing to Do with Me"
This is "clericalizing" praise. In the classics, the praisers include devīs, gandharvas, brahmins, tree deities, and bodhisattvas in the human world — no sutra restricts praisers to any one group of people. The essential act of a praise verse is "truthfully speaking merit," and this act requires neither ordination, nor attainment of a fruit, nor any title.
Clarification: as long as you have seen real merit and are willing to speak it truthfully — you are already doing praise. The form can be extremely simple: aloud or in the mind, in a few words or in long prose and verse.
Conclusion — One Sentence to Sum It Up
Laying the two sutras on top of each other, praise is the verbal practice of "truthfully speaking real merit with a reverent heart." It can be nested in the bodily etiquette of reverence and offering, in the mantra sentences of dawn purity, in the long prose of the three refuges; but stripped to its innermost core, it is always the same act: without exaggeration, without flattery, without carrying greed — simply saying clearly the merit that truly exists: another's, the Buddhas' and bodhisattvas', or even the very few most real things in this world.
When a contemporary mind fed on exaggeration and short sentences begins to practice "truthfully speaking one sentence of praise," what it begins to repair is not only speech karma but the entire direction of attention.