In plain words
He thinks that wife and children are bonds, that house and property are bonds, that attachment and self-regard are bonds. No, no. These are not bonds. If these were the bonds, no great effort would be needed to slip free of them. To leave wife and children is no great thing. There is no lack of people in the world who have given up house and property. There are millions upon millions who have lost self-regard and attachment. Are all these free of bondage? No, no.
These are not the bonds we have. So long as one remains without knowing who one is, that state is the bond. The unawareness that cannot know itself is the bond. A person who cannot know himself is open, however far he goes, to being caught in this bond. So long as this bond remains, sorrow cannot be escaped; so long as sorrow remains, Ānanda is not found. Then what is the cause of this sorrow? Is it sorrow merely because one has failed to know oneself? No. This sorrow arises from asat, from tamas and from death. So: asat, tamas, death; through these three alone sorrow comes to man. We take asat, Prakṛti, to be Satya, believe it to be eternal, are deluded and fall under its sway. However long we try in Prakṛti, and in however many ways, we cannot see anything that lasts. These goods, vehicles and the like are things that change all the time; neither personality nor quality is ever seen to stay firm; so as long as we hold the unreal world to be Satya, this sorrow does not leave us; so we must forget the very idea of the world. Only then is our sorrow ended.
Next, who is the jīva? By these five elements, by the five sheaths, by the five prāṇas, by the five powers of seeing; merely because we are filled with these, we think of ourselves as a jīva. This is not the principle of the jīva. So beyond this there is one thing: divinity, grandeur, newness, the eternal and timeless principle of the Ātma. There is one principle of light that is ever blossoming; there is one that is filled with divine purity. The principle of the jīva without spiritual blossoming is no different from beastliness. So until we come to know this sacred principle of the jīva, sorrow cannot be escaped.
Next, what is God? What is this mortality? To what does death come? We must inquire into this Satya too. What is born, dies. Death comes only to what is born; so how can death come to that which has no birth at all?
The eternal one, who has no death and no birth, without beginning, middle or end, without origin is He; neither dying nor killing nor being killed, witness everywhere, ever, is the Ātma.
The day we win this principle of the Ātma, that very day our sorrow ends. That is why: to give up asat, to keep tamas in mind, and to attain the eternal principle of Brahman. Only when we forget what must be forgotten does our sorrow end. Only when we know what must be known do we attain Ānanda.