Passage 9

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In plain words

You must pour out all your powers, of body, mind and spirit, for the country alone. A life without love of country is wasted.

This is my motherland, this is my dear mother tongue, this is my faith: one who cannot say so, striking his breast, is there one such living being on the earth?

There must be love of country. You must win proper honour and esteem in society. You must become worthy of your parents' Prema. How can this unfortunate one, who has not been blessed to be worthy of his parents' Prema, serve the country? But when a few institutions such as these grow today, any amount of peace and security can be brought to the country.

Embodiments of Prema! Recognise well what education is about. No one becomes a student merely by learning his letters.

Are all who have learnt to read and write students? Does one who gains college degrees become educated? Is learning without Sujñāna and merit true learning? If learning is only for a living, do not beasts and birds live?

So our learning is not for a living. So recognise this truth. Merely learning to read does not make anyone educated. You may write. You may read. That has nothing to do with education. It is only something gained by practice. Education must reach the heart. Is learning that does not go as far as the heart learning at all? Only when we join it with the heart and put that very thing into practice, they said, is this Ātma-vidyā. This very Ātma-vidyā is spiritual education. Vidyānāṃ ādhyātmika vidyā. All worldly kinds of learning are like small streams. Physics, chemistry, mathematics, zoology: all these are tiny little channels. Spiritual education is like the ocean. All these kinds of learning must surely flow into that ocean. Nadīnāṃ sāgaro gatiḥ. So along with all these kinds of learning, it is most necessary to study spiritual education too.

Without spiritual education, humanness itself cannot shine. Self-confidence is most necessary. But we weep over something or other. What we must achieve, for that we do not weep.

You wept when you were born, you wept when you died; in between you wept over countless things; when Dharma declined, did you weep to raise it up? What did you weep for? Did you weep for the sake of weeping?