In plain words
If the great ṛṣis of old won good name through sacred deeds and sacred, divine thoughts, and grew in spiritual power, the root cause was their own conduct!
A life without discipline falls into many troubles
We must, above all, keep a disciplined life. If there is no discipline at all in life, it falls into every kind of trouble. Nature keeps many kinds of rules. Keeping to sunrise and sunset and taking them as its basis, and on through the seasons, it keeps its own rules. In this matter Nature herself sets before us the right ideal. It is because man does not keep such rules that he falls into troubles and losses of many kinds.
Students today give no thought at all to their śreyas and pine for preyas alone. “Na śreyo niyamaṃ vinā,” the scriptures proclaim. It is because there is no niyama that man's śreyas is dwindling. Today games and pastimes have come up for the sake of entertainment. But this entertainment is gradually leading to grief. In former times, in lands such as Rome, Sweden, Greece and China, these games first began for pleasure, for recreation, for novelty. Little by little they came to a sorry state. That is why they lost the name ‘games’ and came to be called ‘gambling’. What is gambling? Because they were played with money and goods at stake, this turned into gambling. In Egypt, Rome and Greece this gambling entered games such as dice, cards and horse racing, and they became well known. In West Africa these games went even further beyond all bounds, and they made a rule that whoever lost must cut off his right hand and give it to the one who won.