In plain words
Embodiments of Prema!
The Upaniṣads are the fruit and the grace of the researches the ancient maharṣis made in their search for God. The chief and very first teaching of these Upaniṣads is ‘Īśāvāsyam idam jagat’: this world is fit for Īśvara to dwell in. Jagat means the world in which we are born, grow up and pass away again. The earth is the support of this world. Without pause, inside the house and out, everywhere, day and night, the wind blows. But we do not see it. By day, in the light, time passes in eating and sleeping and in our work. At night the world sleeps without a care. Somewhere in the world, always, creation, sustenance and dissolution of one kind or another go on. Merit, births, weddings and ceremonies go on moment after moment, and time passes in laughter and in tears. There is no pause in it at all. Heat that melts the rocks, rain like water poured from pots, cold that freezes water, the temperate seasons: with such changes, time in the form of the year moves on. It is very hard for man to understand a world like this, made up of what is seen.
For a living being, from the very first, hunger rises with birth itself. The moment the navel cord is cut, the baby wails. When we rub honey or milk on its tongue, its hunger is eased and it sleeps peacefully. What matters most to man is food. This food comes from grain alone, and in no other way do we get it. This grain grows only through water. The earth drinks the water and gives the crop. No mantra or charm, no wealth of any kind, fills the stomach. Hunger is not satisfied. So first of all man bends his back for the work of farming. In this very work of farming man sets his life going. He makes his cattle and his crops flourish. By its fruit come a full stomach of food, eyes full of sleep, a body fully clothed, a house full of children. At first he thinks this alone is the duty of life. But little by little man's intelligence grows. Huts become mansions. The population has grown. Villages have been turning into towns. By the unfolding and the light of this intelligence, man has come to know everything he needed to know. But they came to know that in this there were also some things they did not know. They could do the work they set out to do. They came to know that there were also some things they could not do.
Man cannot make the earth. They cannot create water.