Paramitha Nopuramu Apa Dedena Lyrics by Sashika Nisansala

Let’s not build up our paramita, the two of us
(the perfections gathered over many lifetimes)
through life after life in saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth)
The smiles we share, let’s toss them to the wind
every single time we meet

If your gentle, innocent face
is going to dissolve into tears
then I will weep until the floodgates open
so that I never see you again

Let’s not build up our paramita, the two of us

As much as you loved me and I loved you,
so much that we cannot bear to part
Let’s not become forbidden lovers, you and I,
slaves to a wrong we should not commit

Let’s not build up our paramita, the two of us

Two people are in love and cannot stop loving each other, yet the voice singing has decided they must let each other go. That is the ache at the centre of this song. It is not the simple sweetness of new love but the harder thing, choosing to walk away from someone you still want, because staying together would be wrong.

The whole song turns on one Buddhist idea that a Sri Lankan listener catches at once. Paramita are the perfections, the good deeds and merit a person gathers across many lifetimes, and there is an old belief that two people who store up merit together are bound to meet again, life after life, in saṃsāra, the long cycle of rebirth. So when the singer says “let’s not build up our paramita together,” it is the saddest possible vow. It means: let’s not even hope to find each other in the next life, let’s not lay down the ties that would pull us back together. Take the smiles we share at every meeting, the singer says, and scatter them to the wind, as if to make sure nothing of this love survives to follow them forward.

The second verse is where the tenderness breaks through. The singer cannot stand to watch this gentle, innocent face melt away in tears, so makes a strange, heartbreaking promise: I will cry so hard that my own tears blur you out of my sight, until I cannot see you at all. Weeping becomes the only way to bear the parting, a curtain of tears drawn between them on purpose.

By the last verse the reason finally surfaces. They love each other deeply, too deeply to part easily, and that is exactly the danger. Somewhere this love is not allowed, and the singer refuses to let them become “forbidden lovers,” people who give in and become slaves to a wrong. So this is a love given up out of conscience, not coldness. The listener is left holding that quiet, painful nobility, two people who chose to lose each other in this life rather than do something they could not live with, even at the cost of every life to come.