In plain words
For everything, faith is what matters.
Sachchidanandam is the coordinator of the Coimbatore Sai Samiti. By faith alone he achieved such success. Faith is the cause of all this. We need not look for any reason for this faith. Faith is beyond reason. How? You love your mother. Why do you love her? You love her only from the faith that she is your mother. Without the faith "She is my mother," you could not love her. Only when there is the faith "He is my God" does Prema arise. "How does this Prema grow?" some people ask. There is no need to try to make that Prema grow. As you go on loving and loving, Prema keeps on growing. Plus + Plus = Plus. We planted a seedling; if every day we keep pulling at it to see how it is growing, it dies. But if we keep giving it the water it needs and the manure it needs, it grows by itself. If you keep giving it your faith, your śraddhā, your Bhakti, it grows by itself. Śraddhā itself turns into Jñāna. That is why it has been said, "Śraddhāvān labhate jñānam." If you have reached the stage of the M.B.A. today, your śraddhā is the root cause of it. Without śraddhā you could not have come this far. That is why, for everything: śraddhā, śraddhā, śraddhā.
Some people look at one and the same thing and are content. Others are discontented. This tumbler holds half water. The contented man says, "This tumbler is half full." The discontented man says, "It is half empty," and despairs. One man sees a rose and is delighted. Another sees the thorn beneath it and is afraid. So joy and sorrow have no separate existence. They lie only in our feelings. See: Love is a flower, lust is a thorn. There is no rose without a thorn. So cut the flower but do not touch the thorn. That is all you have to do. Let us take what we need and leave what we do not need. Why should you argue over what is not needed? Take what is needed; leave what is not. If young people enter the life of the country with feelings like these, the country will prosper beyond measure. Sacred Bhārata holds a divine essence.
The Coimbatore president spoke the other day; he said that ingenuity is very necessary. Here is an example of it. There was a rich man. To test him, Śrī Lakṣmī and Daridra Lakṣmī both came. "Which of us two is beautiful?" they asked him to decide. He thought it over. "If I say Śrī Lakṣmī is beautiful, who knows whether the goddess of poverty will come and torment me! If I say Daridra Lakṣmī is lovely, Śrī Lakṣmī may go away. What am I to do?" As he thought this, an idea came to him.