In plain words
What we keep saying is not, that is! What we keep saying is, that is not! What is, is one alone: God, for ever. What has turned out not to be is the universe; see this, dear one.
Yat dṛśyaṃ tannaśyaṃ: every object that is seen, too, comes to its end in the womb of time. Longing to win lasting Śānti in this world of name and form, man gives himself up to many efforts and many sādhanas. He tries to search for the principle of the Ātma, eternal Satya, in a world conjured out of what is seen. Are Satya and Śānti to be found in the world? Or are they within oneself? That is the Satya man fails to recognise. As long as we keep the seen turned outward, only the seen comes into view; the principle of Satya called the seer cannot come into view.
As long as we merely look at this garland, only the flowers are known to us; the thread that holds it up does not show. Only when we search into the flowers that show on top, only when we grow the power of enquiry that asks by what support these flowers are able to hold together, and search it out. To some extent the unmanifest thread becomes manifest. In just the same way, we set our aim on this world conjured out of the seen and, falling prey to a vain hope that happiness and Śānti are to be had in it, we push away from us the principle that is beyond all change. The world conjured out of the seen gives man a moment's happiness. All riches, too, are gone in a moment like a flash of lightning, and never hold still. Kin and friends, all of them, cast off the body and pass away before our very eyes; the joy this conjured world gives is a moment's joy. We are following the very path that loses us lasting Ānanda.
Not only this. We forget, too, the Satya that true Ānanda comes only from turning our gaze within. For all the people of Bhārata this is proof before their eyes. All of us know from experience that in a Śiva temple Nandi is there before Śiva. When we go to a temple of Rāma, the sight of Hanumān standing before Him for the darśan of Rāma meets our eyes. When we go to a temple of Viṣṇu, Garuḍa stays in Viṣṇu's presence with deep Bhakti, humble and obedient, bound to wait on His command. That is why the people of Bhārata worship Hanumān, Garuḍa and Nandi, and we have made it part of our custom. What is the reason? Because that Nandi, that Garuḍa, that Hanumān had no outward gaze and dedicated their citta to gazing on Īśvara alone; because they set their gaze against the outward turn and turned it back: that is just how they came to be worthy of worship.