In plain words
Now, the one at the second gate is vicāraṇa. When does vicāraṇa arise in us? Only when two things come together do we need vicāraṇa. We begin to inquire which of the two is the right one. When rice and stones come together, we inquire which is the rice and which are the stones, and take out the rice alone, apart. This separating is most necessary for every man. If you give a monkey a banana, it strips off the whole skin and eats only the pulp inside. So we separate out every worldly thing. In the same way, in this vicāraṇa, the yoga of separating, we must separate the Ātma from the anātma. That is the vicāraṇa we must carry out. What is true, what is untrue, what is good, what is bad. In this vicāraṇa man must follow the right path. Into it he must bring the fitting strength of Buddhi as well. Only when we bring that Buddhi in well do we reach the level beyond the senses. Among these possessions, vehicles and such things of the material world, what is lasting, what is not? The ‘I’ that experiences is lasting. But all the things it experiences are fleeting. This ‘I’ is the very form of the Ātma, not the body.
The body is made of the five elements; the body must fall one day; the indweller is free of all ill; consider: for the indweller birth and death and the marks of the fetters of delusion do not exist; see the truth: that indweller is the God of gods; reflect on it in your mind: He is the very form of the Ātma.
Whatever is born must die. That which has no birth or death is the true form. All bodies are born. They grow. All these are forms subject to the six changes. They are being born, growing, flourishing, perishing, waning and coming to an end. So everything subject to these six changes is impermanent. The second gate man welcomes and lets in only the one who has carried out this vicāraṇa well and, in this vicāraṇa, recognised the true principle of the Ātma. Otherwise, to heap still more bonds on the impermanent body, to suffer sorrows and griefs in bonds of this kind, and, not content with ruining oneself, to try to ruin another life too: this goes against vicāraṇa. That is why this examination of what is eternal and what is not is most necessary. That is the power of vicāraṇa.
Now the third is tṛpti. ‘Finding contentment in just what one has’ means being content with as much as is one’s own. Someone going along the road found 99 rupees. If he rejoices, ‘By my good fortune, by God’s grace, I have found these 99 rupees!’, there is great joy. If he thinks again, ‘Had I found one more rupee it would have made a hundred,’ he loses these 99 rupees on the way. Nothing is one’s own.