Pipena Malakata Lyrics by Malani Bulathsinhala

To a flower that blooms, to a stream that flows,
O people who cannot feel the Buddha’s virtues that they feel,
what world will you go to after death?
Our merits and our sins come following behind us.

To a rough cluster of rocks, to a lump of soft clay,
O people who cannot feel the Buddha’s virtues that they feel,
what world will you go to after death?
Those merits and sins of ours come following behind us.

To the flower that blooms…

To the sun and the moon both, to this great earth,
O people who cannot feel the Buddha’s virtues that they feel,
what world will you go to after death?
Our merits and our sins come following behind us.

To the flower that blooms…

This is a Buddhist song that gently scolds us. It looks at the natural world, a flower opening, a stream running over stones, a lump of wet clay, the sun and moon, the wide earth itself, and says that all of these silent, unthinking things somehow carry the quiet goodness of the Buddha within them. Then it turns to people and asks how it can be that we, who can think and speak and choose, are the ones who fail to feel that same goodness.

The line that repeats, “danena buduguna nodanena minisuni,” is the heart of it. “Buduguna” means the virtues or qualities of the Buddha, the loving kindness, the calm, the compassion that Buddhists try to live by. The song’s quiet accusation is that a blooming flower and a flowing stream “feel” these virtues naturally, the way nature simply is what it is, while we human beings, with all our awareness, walk through life numb to them. The rough rocks, the soft clay, the sun and moon and earth are set against us on purpose. Even the most ordinary, lifeless things hold something we have lost.

Then comes the question that gives the song its weight. After death, what world will you go to? In Buddhist thought there is no escaping this, your good deeds (pin) and your bad deeds (pav) follow you like a shadow into the next life, deciding where you are reborn. “Pin pav enawa api pasupasse” pictures merit and sin trailing close behind us, always there, never left behind at the grave. So the question is not meant to frighten as much as to wake us up.

What the listener is left holding is a soft, sobering reminder. The flowers and rivers ask nothing and judge no one, yet they shame us simply by being at peace. The song asks us to look at them and remember the kindness and the awareness we were given, before our time runs out and only our deeds remain to speak for us.