In plain words
Today the value of education has fallen completely. Education stays on the tongue, but true education is not in the heart. Education does not come merely from reading. Our whole life depends on education itself. To go to a market and weigh the price, the good and the bad, of every article is also education. To know how to go about in the bazaar is education. To know how cooking is to be done is also an education. To know how business is to be done is also education. Education means just this: the way that teaches Viveka is education. Not Viveka alone: in the way we put to use the Viveka we have gained, there is also a kind of education to be had.
So, though scientific learning has grown abundant today, if the knowledge of how to use it is not in our reflection, all this science becomes useless. Not only must we gain knowledge; we must know the way to use it. Not merely use it: we must put it to good use. We must shape our whole life into something that matters, something radiant, something ideal, something that gives joy.
Every man desires joy. But he does not follow the way that wins joy. Do we get it merely by wishing? We must come to the understanding through which we experience this in our life. A small example. We eat food. If the salt in this food is a little short, we shove it aside with a bang. If a dish that will be digested in a few hours lacks the right taste, we push it aside. This life we live for seventy, eighty, ninety years: must it not have a taste too! We want good. So that good must enter us. We want to be honoured by others, but do we honour others? So, in whatever way we wish others to regard us, we must try to regard others in just that way. Only then do teachers gain true authority. Whatever we teach the children, we must go on showing that very thing in ourselves. If some, while smoking away comfortably themselves, say, ‘Hey! Don't smoke cigarettes, it is wrong,’ what will they give for an answer? In this way we teach in the name of authority. If he is an intelligent student, he asks, ‘What is the harm if I smoke?’ One may say, ‘It brings cancer, the lungs are ruined.’ ‘If it is going to bring cancer, if there is nothing but harm in it, why do you smoke?’ he asks. What answer will you give then? So, if you teach without such authority, how will the student follow? So, for the student's aim to grow, we too must enter that lasting path.
Since you, in particular, live abroad, there are many matters you must teach the children above all. It is through certain foods that there is a chance to build up health. Because this food is not right, they fall ill as well. This ill health comes just from taking too much rest. Today, abroad, they do not even have natural sleep. Even that sleep they sleep by taking pills. So the whole of life is turning into an artificial life. Even little children taking these drugs, or going about with many other kinds of bad habits: this is on the increase a great deal. This starts, to some extent, through the parents themselves. If we want to set the children right, and if there is enough time for it, we must be somewhat ready to speak to the parents too. This too will be a kind of service. Even if we serve the children well only while they are with us, once they go home they take a wrong path through the parents, and we cannot set that right. If the father takes a bottle, gives his wife a bottle, and gives his son a bottle, what will the son do! So, even if the parents take the bottle, you must take water; you must not touch the bottle. That is how it must be done. Only when you give such strong counsel will there be a chance to check, to some extent, the bad habits that have grown up in the Western countries today.
You must teach them to eat sāttvic food. All we see are studies that scramble merely for a bellyful. For this is not merely for living, but for the highest goal of life. We must press home to the children the highest goal of life. When you set about telling it, you too must practise it. If even a few take up such a vow, you will surely have done the country a great deal of good. You must regard this very service of the country as the service of God. One should possess the head of Janaka, the head of Śaṅkara, the heart of Buddha. What does that mean? To keep doing action, simply carrying it out, without a thought for its fruit at all: that is Janaka's niṣkāma karma. Vasiṣṭha has called this very thing Rājayoga as well.