In plain words
Always set yourselves a high aim
Your head, your food, your blood: all of it is their gift. That is to say: never forget that your thoughts, your food and the drops of blood in every vein are the gracious gift of your parents. With resolve and with dedication to the task, you must shape your life into a divine life. Never take part in any work thinking, ‘If it comes, it comes; if it goes, it goes.’ Take up dīkṣā. You must pass in the highest class. If each one of you has the firm resolve to stand in the first class, you can achieve anything. Always set yourselves a high aim. If you shoot without missing, shoot a tiger. What is the use of chasing a lame dog and hitting it?
If we set our sights on good marks, we may fall a little short of them; that does not matter. But if we set our sights on the 35 pass marks and think, ‘This much will do,’ they will sink lower still. Our sights must always be on 90 or 80 per cent, and must never come down. Set your aim high in that way. Work hard for it.
Girl and boy students must take great people, the noble and the learned, as their ideals.
Students must take great people and the greatly learned as their ideals. Decorate your homes with pictures of ideal figures such as Vivekānanda, Caitanya and King Janaka, and take them as your ideals. But if you fill your heads with foolish thoughts and say you will live without ideals, there can be nothing more unwise than that. You go to the town and come back. At every step you must conduct yourselves with great discipline. You must be such that people think, ‘How fine the students of the Sathya Sai institution are, how pure their conduct is!’ ‘Oh! These are students of the Sathya Sai institution!’: such is the fame and honour you must bring it. That distinction is what we want from you. We want nothing else. You must do well, go to your husbands' homes, be humble before your husbands and your parents-in-law, act in keeping with their wishes, and win a good name.