In plain words
Until we recognise their secret, we cannot bring the senses under our control in the least. So, first of all, we must try to recognise the secret of the body and senses, Manas and Buddhi. This body. It is not only something that is burnt after we die. As long as we live, we are being burnt to ashes on the pyre called worry. This worry does not reduce to ashes the body alone. It burns to ashes thoughts of many kinds as well.
That is why we must recognise the Satya of ‘Dahyatīti dehaḥ’: that this body is what is burnt and what burns. “Śīryatīti śarīraḥ.” This is what is called śarīra. What makes waste and what wastes away. So it is śarīra. That is its other name. This śarīra takes shape as a lump of blood. Then it grows into tender childhood. It becomes an attractive youth, and in old age it undergoes many changes. So, since it undergoes many changes and has the power to waste away and the power to make waste, it came to be called śarīra. This śarīra has one more name, ‘a rented hovel’. It is only a rented house; the Ātma dwells in this house for a while only, and then pays the ‘rent’ called death and goes away. Everyone knows how it goes with a rented house. The owner makes efforts of every kind to get rid of the tenant. When does the owner try to drive the tenant out of the house? When he cannot pay the rent properly. Or when he pays too little, or when he looks after the house carelessly and neglects it in many ways; then the owner tries to send the tenant away. So, before this state called death comes upon us. We enter on the right path. We nourish the body in the proper way. When we then conduct ourselves so as to satisfy the owner, the owner treats the tenant here with honour and respect.
That is to say, this body is a house earned by heaping up the merit of many lives. It is this that has been chosen, in a measure, as a boat for crossing the sea called saṃsāra. We must try to cross this sea of saṃsāra before the boat springs leaks and falls apart. So the Bhagavad Gītā has taught that this body is a sacred thing. This itself has also been called the kṣetra. Kṣetra has two meanings. One is the earth. The other is a holy place. Here, when we take it as the earth, we have to be ready to reap the very crop of whatever seed we plant in this earth. When we sow the seeds of sin in this kṣetra called the body, that is, in this earth, we have to reap the fruit of sin alone; when we scatter the seeds of merit, we have to receive the fruit of merit alone.
Here the owner of this kṣetra is the jīva.