In plain words
To believe what is not one's own to be one's own is precisely the nature of Dhṛtarāṣṭra. This mind too is just like that. It keeps longing for what is not its own: ‘I want it, I want it.’ If someone wears a good watch, it says, ‘I want that.’ If someone has a good pair of trousers stitched and wears them, this fellow keeps longing, ‘I want that.’ In playing monkey games of this kind there is not the slightest difference between the mind and a monkey. The mind always longs for what is mean and disgusting, but it has no habit of longing for what is good. In the same way Dhṛtarāṣṭra, longing for a kingdom that was not his and wanting it for himself, went on beating time on his sons' side alone, however wicked they were. So this Gītā has been teaching that when we let this mind called Dhṛtarāṣṭra go its way in all directions, the father himself can be the cause of the sons' plight and degradation. So today, curbing the mind, giving no chance at all to the passions that flare up at this age or the fury that surges, calming them, and teaching the mind sense, ‘Mind, if you set about the effort to examine what is eternal and what is not, I will follow you; if not, I will give you fitting punishment’: we must today set about the effort of teaching sense to the mind itself. The mind is like a poisonous snake. A snake never sets out to move straight, directly. It goes twisting this way and that: a crooked path. Our mind goes just like that. It never goes straight. For those who are young, we can call it the delirium of youth. It is a sickness. On a road 60 feet wide, there is no room for two friends to walk. They walk down the centre. We can call this nothing but a mark of a kind of Ahaṅkāra and of Ajñāna. Then this snake has a second bad quality too. If anything comes near, whatever touches its mouth, it goes on biting it and biting it. In the same way, our mind goes on wanting, ‘I want it, I want it,’ of everything it sees. Going the crooked way, and craving everything it sees: the images that fit these two are the two poison fangs this serpent has; as long as those two fangs are in the snake's mouth, it is a venomous creature. You are afraid to go near it. But if we pull out those two fangs and throw them away, it ends up a helper to the man who makes the snake dance and fills his belly by it. We too have those two fangs.