In plain words
At last, when Śrī Rāmacandra came to fight them, what great sacrifice did Lava and Kuśa make? They remembered their mother. ‘Mother, our mother, is a chaste woman: may He fall into a swoon at this weapon’: with these words he remembered his mother and loosed the weapon. Their father, Śrī Rāmacandra, fell into a swoon, but the power of sons devoted to their mother spread through the world. So we must try to recognise the divinity of the sacred power in devotion to the mother. So no one can settle of the mother’s power that it is this or that, so great or so much. So we must believe the land we were born in and the mother who bore and raised us to be our two eyes, and develop the śraddhā fit to serve our mother and our motherland. Without this love of country and this devotion to the mother, we are not human beings at all. When we hold as our two eyes this land that has taken us into its lap, and this mother of our body who carried us in her womb, this becomes true Bhakti and surrender. When we merely say ‘Bhakti, Bhakti’ and do some sādhana or other, it does not take the shape of Bhakti. We must try to recognise the devotion to the mother found in all living beings, too.
We must believe all this power in our body to be the form of Durgā. We must not squander it. We become people who have wasted our mother. In our looks all our power is being wasted in many ways. So we must look with cool glances. In our words all this power is being wasted. We must use our words as holy words that bring others joy. In our thoughts, too, power of many kinds is being wasted. So that we do not waste this power, so that we put it to good use, we have begun these pūjās. The chief prayer in this is: ‘O Mother! O Durgā, who dwells in my body as the form of all power, set my powers on the right path, on the right path, on the path of good use’: so we must pray. Next, the food we eat. All of this is the form of Lakṣmī. We must not waste even a single grain of rice. We should eat as much as we need. Water too, we should use only as much as we need. We must not use it as we please, thinking, ‘There is plenty of water coming from the tap.’ These five elements are forms of Lakṣmī. We must not misuse the five, sound, touch, form, taste and smell; we must not misuse even sound. The one we mean to speak with, you alone, should hear these words, and no one else: so softly and sweetly we should use them. When some people talk in their rooms, it can be heard out in the bazaar.