Amma Warune Lyrics by Nanda Malani

O mothers…
O mothers
O mothers, like the supremely enlightened Buddha
On the day they see their children’s tears of sorrow
They reach out their hands from the heaven of the gods
And wipe away those very tears

For children who have no mother
Who can know the depth of their hidden grief?
The mothers who do know that grief
Will one day in time become Buddhas
In saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth), they will become Buddhas one day

Even when her heart is tender and her mind is simple, her love only grows
The whole world says it loves you, your heart believes it
But the day that turns out to be an illusion and you are left alone
It is only mother who stays close beside you
It is only mother who stays close beside you

This is a song in praise of mothers, sung with the kind of reverence Sri Lankans usually reserve for the Buddha himself. The very first line sets the tone by calling mothers “samma sambudu,” the same words used for the supremely enlightened one. That is a bold thing to say in a Buddhist culture, and the song means it. A mother’s love, it tells us, is so complete and so selfless that it stands beside the highest thing a person can become.

The opening image is tender and almost cosmic. When a mother sees her child crying, she reaches down all the way from the heaven of the gods to wipe those tears away. The idea is that a mother’s care does not stop at death or distance. Even from another world she is watching, and she comes when her child hurts. From there the song turns to the saddest case it can imagine, a child with no mother at all, and asks who could ever measure that hidden grief. Because mothers carry and understand that kind of sorrow so deeply, the song says, they will one day, somewhere along saṃsāra, the long road of rebirths, ripen into Buddhas themselves. In other words, the patience and love it takes to be a mother is already the practice that leads to enlightenment.

The last verse brings it down to earth. The whole world will tell you it loves you, and your heart wants to believe it, but the day life proves that love was only an illusion and leaves you standing alone, there is one person still there. Only your mother stays close. After all the talk of heaven and Buddhahood, the song ends on something very plain and very true, that when everyone else falls away, a mother does not.