Sagaraya Bandu Wedanawo

Sorrows as vast as the ocean
break apart and fade away
Taking this life as a pilgrimage,
off we go on our way…

Even the Bodhisattva, fulfilling the perfections, had Mara’s armies against him
So then, how can we be spared our own cruel obstacles?
The mountain of sorrow that came to him, the Bodhisattva tasted as honey
So then, let us too bear our rivers of sorrow

Sorrows as vast as the ocean…

Tears back then, smiles today, and wishes are answered
If what you wish for is good, dreams light up along the road you walk
Where is the victory a human world cannot win?
Those who live their lives on human decency, they have already won

Sorrows as vast as the ocean…

This is a song of consolation, the kind people reach for when life has gone hard on them. It speaks for everyone rather than one person with one heartbreak, and the argument it makes is a Buddhist one. Pain is real and it can be the size of an ocean, but even an ocean of it wears down and drains away. In the same breath the song calls living a vandanawa, a pilgrimage, the walk people make to Sri Pada or to the old temples of Anuradhapura. That single word sets the tone for everything after it. You walk, the road is meant to be hard, and the hardship belongs to the journey instead of ruining it.

The second verse reaches for the strongest example available in Buddhist tradition. The Bodhisattva, working through lifetime after lifetime to perfect the paramitas before he became the Buddha, still had Mara and his armies ranged against him. Mara stands for temptation and obstruction, the force that comes at a person hardest just before they arrive. The comfort here is blunt and honest: if he was not spared, no one is going to spare you either. Then the verse asks for something more than patience. He took the mountain of grief that landed on him and tasted it as honey, so we can at least sit with the rivers of sorrow that come to us.

The last verse lets some light in. Yesterday’s tears turn into today’s smiles, and the things people long for do arrive. There is a condition attached, and it is quiet but firm: if what you want is good, the dreams brighten as you walk toward them. Then comes the line the whole song rests on, asking where you would find a victory the human world cannot reach. Nothing is begged from heaven. The win is here, on the ground, inside this life.

The closing line names the price of that win. Anyone who lives by minis kama, plain human decency, has already won, whatever the score looks like from outside. That is what you are left holding at the end, something sturdier than hope and a good deal more useful. It is why this song still gets played at funerals, in hospital rooms, and on long bus rides home.