In plain words
Sorrows keep on happening. But from these sorrows, these griefs, these worries we must learn one lesson. For this Dakṣiṇāmūrti took the ocean as his example. Even as he watched, a big piece of rubbish came on the wind and fell into the ocean. The moment the rubbish fell, the ocean sent wave after wave and had the rubbish pushed onto the shore. He did not keep this rubbish within the ocean even for a single moment. Dakṣiṇāmūrti was pained: “Ocean! How selfish you are, how selfish! You are endless, of fathomless depth. And you could not bear it when such a little rubbish entered you! One so great, unable to bear such a little rubbish: how selfish that is! How narrow-minded!” he said. The ocean gave Dakṣiṇāmūrti a fine reply: “Dakṣiṇāmūrti! It is not a thing unknown to you. If I let this little rubbish into me today, all the rubbish that comes tomorrow will collect. It will hide my very form. In the end all this dust will hide my very form and nature. So only when I keep out even a little rubbish from the very beginning do I stay pure. I stay a home for gems!” he said. So even if an impurity, a slight feeling, enters him, every man must make the effort needed to drive it away at once. If you think, “It is small, it is small,” in the end it will grow big and hide your very nature. It will make you forget your very humanness. So you must make your humanness manifest. You must make it blossom. In that situation, when some evil feelings, evil thoughts or evil plans come into us, we must recognise them at once and make the effort needed to drive those evil feelings away.
However big a thing may be, we can overcome it with something small. Little ants, gathering together, kill great big snakes. We must never hold the feeling that we are small. We must gain the strength needed to carry out the duty we have to do. In the world, all kinds of bad things strike against the good. The song of the cuckoo grates on the ears of crows. Cranes see the form of the swan and mock it. The swans lose nothing by that. Many such things keep on pursuing us in the world. Not only do they pursue us; they are like a pair of birds that go together. We must not give in to this at all. We must not bow. We must face it, fight it, recognise Satya and achieve it. We must achieve victory.