Me Nonimena Divi Gamane Lyrics by HR Jothipala

On this unending journey of life,
until my own nirvana comes into sight,
let me be born as your son, mother,
I will come back to you, all through saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth).
On this unending journey of life,
until my own nirvana comes into sight.

On the day my father was no more,
you did not leave me alone.
You never let the fire of hunger touch me,
you soothed away my sorrow and my pain.
Mother, may you attain Buddhahood,
I sing this song now of a mother’s goodness.

From the illusion of this wide, deceiving world,
you saved me from shame and disgrace.
You cleared and brightened my mind,
you raised me up and showed me the way.
The blessings I received,
made the road of my life bright.

On the day my father was no more,
you did not leave me alone.
You never let the fire of hunger touch me,
you soothed away my sorrow and my pain.
Mother, may you attain Buddhahood,
Mother, may you attain Buddhahood.

This is a son’s song of thanks to his mother, sung as something close to a prayer. He is not asking for anything or pining for anyone. He is looking back over his whole life and saying, plainly and from the heart, that everything good in it came from her, and the highest wish he can offer in return is for her own release from suffering.

The opening sets the scale. He speaks of “the unending journey of life,” meaning saṃsāra, the long chain of births and deaths that Buddhists believe each of us travels until we reach nirvana. Most people would hope to break free of that cycle as soon as they can. He says the opposite: until his own nirvana finally comes into view, let him be born as her son again and again, in life after life. To a Sri Lankan listener that is the deepest thing a child can say to a mother. He is not just grateful for this one life, he wants her for every life he still has to live.

Then the song fills in why. His father died when he was young, and a widowed mother raised him alone. The images are simple village ones, and that is what makes them land. “She never let the fire of hunger touch me” is the picture of a poor mother who went without so her child would not, the hunger in the belly drawn as a small fire she kept from ever reaching him. She kept him from shame in a “wide, deceiving world,” she cleared his mind and gave him wisdom, she showed him the right road and her blessings lit the whole path of his life. None of it is grand language. It is a son listing, one by one, the ordinary things his mother did that turned out to be everything.

The line he keeps coming back to, “Amme oba budu wewa,” is the heart of it: “Mother, may you become a Buddha.” In Buddhist devotion that is the most generous blessing one person can give another, a wish for the final end of all suffering. He cannot repay what she gave him in money or in words, so he offers her this instead, and offers to keep being her child across saṃsāra so he can keep loving her. By the end you are left with that quiet weight, a grown man with nothing big to give, handing his mother the only two things he has, his gratitude and his prayer.