In plain words
Through this time, life itself is changing. As to whether this life is changing or not, our own body is the proof of it. Childhood, youth, old age: only through these three stages of time do these forms go through certain changes. Time is the goddess Kāḷikā. On the stage called this life, this Kāḷī is performing a dance too, a most wondrous and strange one. While she dances this dance, life dwindles away without our even knowing. We should look at what has passed in one way and know it as passed, as what has gone by, know what is as the present, and what is to come as the future; but we picture this future, present and past for ourselves, and with these ideas we set out to lay down many kinds of ideals of life for the life ahead of us. Past, future and present are all only what arises from the changing of time; they are not created separately. But the one chief aim is just this: that we recognise such time in whatever way we can and set about the effort of making that time sacred. These śāstras, the dharmas laid down by the Vedas, came precisely to show this: in what way time must be spent, not taking the body as the chief aim but keeping our time chiefly in view, for this body to reach a sacred state. In the Yakṣa's questions, Yama put a question to Dharmaja. ‘My son! What is real? What is it that changes? What is it that moves on with time?’ So he put his questions. Then Dharmarāja gave a clever answer. ‘This is nothing but God's cooking,’ he said. He has taken the universe itself as a pot. Now, to cook, there must be firewood, there must be fire, there must be a ladle. Then, taking this pot, the universe, He puts the beings called living creatures into that vessel, and with the firewood called nights and days, taking the seasons as His ladle and the measure of life as His hand, He turns those creatures this way and that in that vessel, so it is said.