In plain words
Saying, I do not need this thought, take some time. Time is everything. We must not be hasty. For fame, if it is to come, comes little by little. But disgrace, if it is to come, bursts out like a flood. Disgrace comes very quickly. Fame, if it is to come, comes slowly. So we must not waste time. Time is very important. This too is bound up with thoughts. Time does not wait for you. It does not follow you. You must follow time. Time is like a mirror. Whether the face is beautiful or ugly, the mirror shows only your own reflection. So whether we do good or do bad, it shows in this mirror called time. So, hoping and blessing you that, doing good, seeing good and being good, we may offer our lives to others as an ideal, I bring My talk to a close.
There is more to this matter of Tulasīdās. Do you know how that wife changed in her repentance? She was content that she had set her husband on the right path. “Alas, I said this in anger. I have made him a sannyāsī; how am I to live now?” She did not turn bitter in this way. “He has found a good path. That itself is a great joy to me!” So saying, the wife too in time became truly ideal.
Once all the villagers went to the Citrakūṭa hill for Rāma's birthday. The wife went with them too, poor woman, to see. She went and sat at a distance. The difference of woman and man belongs to the body, not to the heart. If she speaks good words, even a woman becomes a great guru. We must not look down on them. He saw his wife among them all. He went over and made full prostration before his wife. “Amma! It is through your teaching that I have come to this state. You are my first guru,” he said. “What is this, my husband bowing to me? No, no, don't!” The wife too did not say that then. “In some way or other you have entered the holy path. This is God's will. But I am at peace. Do not worry about me. There is one great quality in you; it is there. Even in such a crowd you saw me, and you have that gratitude to me for speaking those words to you as a guru.