In English
Adopt the sacred texts as guides for daily life
Believe - strive - succeed; that is the message of the sacred texts. But the texts are not put to these uses by those who handle them. They are read for disputative ends, for pedantic display of intricate scholarship; or as some people do, they are worshipped as holy relics of the past. They are seldom adopted as guides for daily life, as life-belts during the perilous sea voyage called life. The , the , the are mastered, but not allowed to become master. You go through them without allowing them to go through you! The volumes are bound in silk and incense sticks are burnt before them, while man prostrates before them in reverence. But no attention is paid to what the pages proclaim. The frills and fringes attract the mind, more than the kernel provided by the text. I am reminded of an old widow who shed tears for hours on end listening to a who was expounding the . At the end of the series of discourses, when the had finished the Valedictory , he called the old widow near the altar and publicly acclaimed her as a sincere seeker of the Godly Path, for she was the most punctual, the most earnest and the most devoted among the hundreds of listeners, as was evidenced by the tears she shed whenever the words of the Lord were referred to. The old lady was surprised at all this. She said she had understood not a word; she did not know what the was or said; she shed tears because the black string with which the palm leaf text of the in the hands of the was tied reminded her of the cord round the waist of her departed husband!