In plain words
That is why: time waste is life waste. It does not matter if we go slowly. We must begin in the right dhyāna. Our life has become like a tēruvāka tree. Will so vast a tree be cut if you merely take a crowbar and strike it? With this nothing at all comes of it. The crowbar too is ruined. We must take the steel axe called Vairāgya and strike. Only then will the fitting state come. We must give up pleasure. For we are toiling for the pleasure of this body. No, no. We must regard real happiness as the happiness of man's mind. For this mind is a horse, the body a cart. If you put the cart in front and the horse behind, what becomes of it? We must put the horse called mind in front. We must put the body behind. How is it to work? We must give food to the head.
Na śreyo yogaṃ vinā. Every person must stay within a limit. Our desires too should be there, a little. But they must not go beyond bounds. A small example of this. Money is necessary for us. Without it our life cannot go on. But if there is too much, there is not a moment's Śānti. If there is none, we cannot live even for a moment. Both of these are hard. How are we to think of the two? It is like the pair of shoes we put on. If the shoes are too small for us, they bite us. If they are big, we cannot walk till we reach home. So they must be the size that fits. Money too: if there is too much, we cannot live. If there is too little, we cannot live either. It must be just right, like the sandals we wear. We must spread abroad our wealth, our virtue and our strength too. Only then will the whole world be well and prosperous. In the same way, we must also spread through society the learning we have earned. How? We must spread it in the form of practice. There is no use in merely calling ourselves teachers and telling the children. Rather than in what you say, the children find much more use in your doing it and showing it. If you say what you say only with your mouth, they too will say it only with their mouths. If you only make it your own experience, he will experience it for himself. So, as the feeling, so the becoming. With Prema, with compassion, with the heart, with a kind of tenderness, we must teach those children's future as well. In the effort to develop this humanness and join divinity to humanness, we must develop Prema.
You teachers must set about teaching always smiling and smiling, trying to make the children laugh. You must not grow irritated with them or get angry with them. You must not frighten them. You must try to win them over with Prema in a fitting way. You must not go away saying, ‘I have told them; my duty is over.’ We must take another class to see whether the lesson we taught has been understood or not, and without fail tell it to them nicely once more. Even if it takes ten days, never mind; teach them the one lesson. If you rush through ten lessons in ten days and say, ‘My work is done,’ there is no use at all. We must keep telling them again what was told. These are little children, tender hearts. We must not grow weary, saying, ‘I am telling the same thing over again.’ We must work so that they understand again what was told and tell it back. We wash the same face four times. Do we grow weary of it? In the same way, we must keep telling them what was told. There, this comparison fits us. Śānti comes. We must develop this Śānti. Only when there is this Śānti does happiness come. So, without growing weary, without bringing anger on ourselves, we must look on the children with Prema and tenderness as our own children. To understand this rightly, a small example. You have a son. There are twenty children in your Bal Vikas. When it comes to ‘How many children do I have, Ammā?’, you say, ‘One.’ No, no. This is very wrong. Bal Vikas teachers must not speak like that. You must say, ‘Twenty-one are my children.’ Twenty Bal Vikas children, one child of your own: twenty-one in all. Then it is a grand thing for us. If you say, ‘I have only one child, and my students are twenty,’ it amounts in a way to setting your son apart. Your son and the Bal Vikas children are not separate. This one is a son of desire; they are sons of Prema. Whatever happiness, whatever progress, whatever welfare you wish for your son, that same happiness, that same progress, that same welfare you must wish for those children too. Once there was a great emperor called Bhojarāja. He had a cowherd. This Bhojarāja's cattle numbered a thousand. This cowherd had a little calf. When he took the king's thousand cattle out to graze, he would take this fellow's calf along on the way too. There, while all the cattle were grazing, a friend of this cowherd came along. ‘What is this, friend! Whose are so many cattle?’ he asked. Then this fellow told him, ‘The king's and mine together, 1001,’ he said. If he does not split it, saying ‘1001’, what an honour for him! If he separates the thousand and separates his own calf, this honour goes. So, if you say that your son is separate and the twenty children are separate, our honour goes.