In plain words
Today, in every country, people have turned selfish for their own gratification; given over to praising themselves, running others down and amusing themselves with empty talk, they let jealousy and envy grow and are sinking into unrest. Without putting good ideals into practice and earning a fame worth the name, they are planting fear and alarm in society by their wicked deeds.
You have all gathered here because today is the festival of Ugādi; but so many hundreds of thousands of Ugādis have come and gone, have they not? This Ugādi too is just the same! This one too has come, and it is going. But if you use the new year to grow on a new path of life, that is its true meaning; this festival urges you to do so; that is precisely its chief purpose.
The name of the new year is good too: the year named Ānanda; Ānanda must be won through purity of the antaḥkaraṇa, through service to society, through remembrance of the Ātma. Carrying out your sacred duties as an offering to God is itself the chief sādhana for the experience of Ānanda. Your name may be Rāma; only when the Rāma principle blossoms in your personality does that name have its meaning. What is the use of taking the name Dharmaja or Dharmarāja? There is no Ānanda in the name; it has its meaning and its worth when you set about the effort to win Śānti and contentment through the practice of Dharma. It is the same with the name “Ānanda” too!
Though you amass wealth, strengthen the Buddhi and bring about your own …, there is no meaning in it whatever. The strength of God and the strength of Dharma are what is vitally needed. Dhṛtarāṣṭra had neither of the two, and that is exactly why his whole line was destroyed! Man does not recognise which karmas are his duty, and does not live by them. He does not notice time racing on with the speed of a gale; he does not even reflect that death is coming nearer and nearer. Not even for a moment does he inquire with Viveka into the worth of humanness, into what its aim is and what its purpose. Man's goal is precisely this: to know the truth that the very Paramātma who abides as the indweller in every being abides in him too, in the form of the Ātma.
Self-praise is a mark of Ahaṅkāra; whoever takes on that nature is never spared unrest, unhappiness and envy. For those who revile others, sin alone is the reward! They win no respect in society; wherever they look, whoever they look at, they see nothing but adharma.