In plain words
A Life without a Goal Is a Life without Meaning
Over the month gone by, do you have any faith at all that there has been some kind of change in you? This must not happen: that you feel this kind of change only for as long as you are here, and that, once you are back in your own places, a change comes over you the other way. Above all, for having spent so many days here, you must keep at least two things safe in your heart. Every single person, every single act, every single aspiration must have what we call a destination, an aim. When there is no aim, no destination, our very life is merely a life without meaning. However many tasks we do, whatever kind of thoughts we think, whatever place we are in, we must keep what we call our aim fixed on the Ātma at all times. Wherever a river is flowing, stand on the bank of that river and set about putting some questions to that river. Will that river give you any answer? Or will it look your way at all, because you are speaking to it? It will not look at all. ‘O river! Where are you going in such a hurry? What is the reason this journey goes on so fiercely? What is your destination? What is your state? Where have you come from?’ However many questions you put, it pays no heed at all to your questions or to your form; stirring itself up in many ways, in its yearning, it keeps on and on with its journey without halting it at all. That is, because it has set its whole aim on its own home, to reach that home of its own from which it arose, it heeds no one's questions and no one at all; to come into the ocean, its husband and its haven, to come into his lap and enjoy Ānanda, it surges on in eager waves and loses no time in any way; falling over hills, falling over hillocks, flowing on as rivers, winding round in bends, wandering through forests, wandering through thorns, wandering over boulders, bearing all its many toils, however many hardships, however many losses, however many sorrows befall it, it does not let go of its aim, and it reaches the sea called the destination.