In plain words
Keeping a foul, ugly, indecent atmosphere around you, if you want to be in Śānti, how will Śānti come? When you want Śānti, shape the surroundings around you to be peaceful! Its inner meaning is that we must develop the broad feeling, ‘The peace of the world is my Śānti.’ That is why, in the old days, following the ancient culture of Bhārata, they wished with a broad heart, ‘Lokās samastās sukhino bhavantu’: that all should be happy. Only when we wish for the peace of the world is Śānti of mind too contained in it. To wish not merely for one's own self-interest, one's own happiness, one's own joy, but for the good of the world and the joy of the world: that is the right mark of a believer.
The vision of equanimity
He who lives in the world must first be a man; he who keeps praising demons and all evildoers is a good-for-nothing.
So, first of all, we must make the effort needed to think of God and try to cross over. We must also inquire which is the basis and which is the chief thing. If we forget what is the support and strive after what rests on it, we do not find Ānanda. Can there be a chariot without wheels? Can there be a crop without water? Only when there is water and manure does the crop grow. Only when there are two wheels does it become a chariot. In the same way, without Prema and faith humanness does not take shape. Just as two wings are the support of a bird, just as two wheels are essential to a cart, so these two are essential to man. Joys and sorrows come and go. We must regard them all alike and experience them alike.
This is the very inner meaning of our mixing neem flowers, jaggery, the sour and the astringent all together into a pacchaḍi on the festival day of Ugādi, and eating it! As if we had sworn today to accept happiness, sorrow, hardship, loss, blame and harsh words all alike, we must also set about practising it in life.