In plain words
A tree can be trained straight, with no bend left in it; a stone can be dressed straight and true; but can anyone train the Manas straight, with no bend left in it? I tell you the plain truth.
Embodiments of Prema! Today is a holy festival day for the whole of Bhārata. Its name is Mahāśivarātri. Rātri means what is filled with darkness. Every single day we go through a night filled with darkness. But today is no ordinary night. It is Śivarātri. A night that is auspicious. It is supremely auspicious. Auspiciousness arises from divinity alone; it does not come from worldly doings. It belongs to Śiva-hood. It befits divinity alone. It is not bound up with any other thing. It belongs to Śiva-hood. Satyam, Śivam, Sundaram. Satya, auspiciousness and beauty: all three are changeless.
He who bears every form, the tranquil; who bears every name, the auspicious; whose form is Saccidānanda, the One without a second: Satyam, Śivam, Sundaram.
We must try to recognise auspiciousness, Śiva-hood. The sights the eye sees are many. Mountains are made of rock, the earth of clay, trees of wood, the body of flesh. For the sake of their livelihood, men give these some names and forms and enjoy them, but they are only changes of the five elements. In the world nothing is seen that is truly a wonder. All things are forms of change. Yet, though man does not recognise it, the Śiva principle, eternal Satya, shines in all. As Kāruṇyānanda said (saṃsāraṃ sāgaraṃ viṣam), we have sunk in this sea. Every trait of the sea belongs to saṃsāra too. Whatever we look at in this world takes shape against our feelings, our fancies and our wishes. As long as the liking is there, whatever is done looks good. If the liking changes at all, even good things take the shape of bad.
In this world no one has the authority to decide what is to be liked and what disliked. Go by daylight with an enemy at your side, and danger comes. Go alone in pitch darkness, and there may be fear, but no danger befalls. Hostile feelings spring up in us moment by moment, like anthills of white ants. To drive away such evil feelings, evil qualities and evil intentions, we must recognise the Satya in us.
For this we must have patience. At the very first, patience tastes very bitter. But its fruit is very sweet. That is why the chief aim is to forgive even the one who has been hostile to us, the one who has harmed us, the one who has buried us in slander, the one who has done us injustice. With this in view the Bhagavad Gītā says, ‘adveṣṭā sarvabhūtānāṃ’. For the sake of Ānanda, man takes up many kinds of sādhana, enters on this path and that, and strives. In truth this is the striving of one who cannot recognise where Ānanda is. A man, they say, searched the whole house, thinking, ‘My spectacles have gone somewhere,’ and at last thought, ‘Oh! They are right on my nose!’ Searching and searching, thinking Ānanda is there, it is over there, and at last establishing the Satya ‘Why, it is in me!’: that is Bhakti itself. Kāruṇyānanda spoke of ‘samiṣṭi bhajana, vyaṣṭi bhajana’. Samiṣṭi bhajana means many people gathering together to contemplate the Name of God. But here he showed another meaning. People plant banana groves and, trying to sell the fruit within a fixed time, pluck even the small young bananas, make them take on a yellow colour, and sell them off. Now the yellow colour comes, but the sweetness does not. Can spoilt milk give the taste of curd! So this amounts, in a way, to cheating. In samiṣṭi bhajana we must sing from the heart; it is not enough to clap along idly just because ten others are singing. It must be done from the heart. Then it ripens. Through bhajans of this kind, and through sādhana, we must try to recognise the Satya in us, the principle of Prema, the divinity.
Here is a small example. In science, in the spiritual śāstras and in the śāstras of Dharma alike, it has been settled that there is nothing beyond the five elements, and that the five elements are parts of the Paramātma. But in what form is the Paramātma's part present in these five elements? Once we recognise this, no one will waste the five elements.