Mata Aloke Genadevi Sansaraye Lyrics by Jikki

Mmm mmm mmm mmm
La la la la la…

You brought light to me through saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth)
Love has grown firm in this living heart of mine
You brought light to me through saṃsāra

My mind is captivated, and for that blessing
a boundless golden love fills this world
My steadfast love runs deep within my heart
You brought light to me through saṃsāra

My life blossoms with sweet, flower-like smiles
the peace I hold rests in the shade of my lord’s feet
So many comforts rise as I move about your feet
You brought light to me through saṃsāra

Where in this world is there sweetness like this?
This heart has given its love to my beloved
My worship of you, my love, becomes my nirvana

This is an old devotional love song, sung by a woman to the man she loves, the kind of love that has settled into something steady and lifelong. She doesn’t sing about the thrill of new feelings. She sings about a love that already feels permanent, as though it were carried across more than one lifetime.

That idea sits right in the opening line. When she says he brought light to her “through saṃsāra,” she is using the Buddhist picture of saṃsāra, the long cycle of birth and rebirth that every soul travels. To say someone brought you light across that cycle is to say this is no passing romance. It is the kind of bond people in Sri Lanka speak of when they believe two lives were meant to meet again and again. He is the lamp in that long darkness, and her love for him has grown firm and certain because of it.

As the song moves on, she reaches for the language of worship to describe an ordinary husband. She speaks of resting in “the shade of his feet” and of moving “about his feet,” and these are images usually kept for a teacher, an elder, or a deity. In Sinhala devotion, to take shelter at someone’s feet is the deepest sign of trust and surrender. By placing her beloved there, she lifts him to the level of someone holy, not because she has lost herself, but because her love feels that sacred. Her life, she says, blossoms into smiles like opening flowers wherever he is near.

The last lines say it most plainly. She asks where else in the world such sweetness could be found, then gives the answer herself: her love for this man, her quiet act of worshipping him, is her nirvana, her release, her peace at the end of all longing. For a Sri Lankan listener that word lands hard, because nirvana is the highest thing a Buddhist hopes for, the end of all wanting. To find it in another person is the strongest thing she could ever say about how much he means to her.