In plain words
Learning bestows humility; from humility comes worthiness; from worthiness, wealth; from wealth, Dharma; and from that comes Swami's compassion.
Students!
The worth of human life does not come from wealth, or from learning, or from strength. Wealth may stay for a while. For a while it may not. A position may hold sway for a while. For a while one may step down from it. True strength, greatness, virtue and authority are sacrifice and character.
‘Not by karma, not by progeny, not by wealth; by sacrifice some have attained immortality.’ True Ānanda is gained through sacrifice. Everyday experience lets us feel this to some extent. We breathe in air; if we do not let that air out again, the lungs are ruined. We eat food. If, once the food we take is digested, we do not discard the residue that is left, the digestive fire is ruined. If the blood in our body fails to circulate properly in one part and stops there, sores form. So well-being comes through sacrifice. So students must have a spirit of sacrifice. All through life, from birth until death, there are a great many kinds of learning to be learnt. So there is no end to learning. There is learning to be learnt in the bazaar, learning to be learnt in the market, learning to be learnt in farming; there is a great deal of learning to be learnt in everything. So learning does not mean only physics, chemistry, mathematics and commerce. From the time we are just a year old we learn ‘Ammā’, ‘Appā’ at our mother's side. Our words, our songs, our games: every one of them truly belongs to learning. But, to our misfortune, we call it learning merely because degrees have been taken in some college. But that is not it. A student must acquire the learning that is fitting. Knowledge of the Ātma alone is true learning.
Ours is not just a hostel and a college. It is an ālaya. There are four kinds of ālaya. 1. The hospital. 2. The dining hall. 3. The school. 4. The temple. Suppose we go to a hospital. There we talk only of things to do with illnesses and medicines. When we go to a temple, we talk of having darśan of the goddess, of touching her, and such matters. And when we come to a school, we talk about learning. We must take learning itself to be life. Learning must be physical, mental and social. We must follow it in the way of the body, and in the way of the Manas we must remember it and worship it. Today our government has arranged things so that if you get 30 marks out of 100, it says you have passed the examination. In truth, if a clever person does a hundred tasks, seventy are bad and thirty are good. It means they themselves have ordered us to make mistakes. But our college is not like that. We must get good marks. Even if the marks do not come, the remarks must not come. From the moment we rise at daybreak until we lie down at night, we must conduct ourselves with care. Here there is one thing you must think about. ‘Why have we come here? Where have we come from? Have we come to study?’ you must ask yourselves. Having come from so very far, leaving our parents, relatives and friends, we give room to needless things, and we end up having to drop the work we came for. So we must ask ourselves whether we are doing properly the work we came for. Whatever we do, we must do it in a way that gives Swami satisfaction.
‘Let your mother be God to you’, ‘Let your father be God to you’, ‘Let your teacher be God to you’. Your parents are the source of your body, so first you must do what gives your parents satisfaction. We must follow good conduct in keeping with the purpose for which they sent us here. We must listen with concentration to the lessons the teachers give in class, and satisfy them with good marks. If we conduct ourselves well in these matters, that itself is Swami's satisfaction. As for talking too much, that gives Swami no satisfaction. Talking too much wears away the strength of the Ātma and the power of memory.