In plain words
With such courage and daring you must leap into this gathering. For that you must get the right training here. Only when your training takes place here today can you go there and work. Without this training, what work can you do if you go there first? For everything
Śreyo hi jñāna mabhyāsāt jñānāddhyānaṃ viśiṣyate dhyānātkarma phalatyāgastyāgācchānti ranantaraṃ.
For everything there must be practice of some kind. In a temple a priest used to do worship every day. When the worship was over he would wave the ārati. Holding a bell, he would swing it well with one hand. He had grown well used to it. He kept turning the one at its own pace and ringing the other at its own pace. Everything went along well. Time, karma and cause came together. He left the body. That is, he died. The villagers appointed a new priest. He had no practice in it. When he rang the bell, the ārati stopped. When he waved the ārati, the bell stopped. See. Even so small a thing needs a great deal of training. If so small a thing needs training, how much more training is needed to make a divine life shine? So only in our institution, only in our Institute, is this training to be had. It is not to be had anywhere else. We must earn for this Institute the value due to it. We must earn the worthiness for it. If you uphold that one good name, that is enough. Nothing else is needed. There is no one to tell you. If we look at home, the parents are sinking you deeper into deception. If we look in the class, the teachers themselves do not know. What then can they tell you? They teach this subject or that, but this discipline, this devotion, this duty, these manners, this behaviour, none of them speak of. Even if you come to class ten minutes late, they say, ‘Ah, sit down, sit down.’ Why did you come ten minutes late? You are not a day scholar; you live right in the hostel. Why did you come late, and not at the one time with everyone? Which bus did you miss? Which train did you miss? Is there no reason to give? Is there not one teacher who asks this question? These teachers too must take this up as one subject in this kind of training. Otherwise what is the use of spending so many crores, so many lakhs? We founded this institution only so as to teach spiritual learning as the main thing and then to harmonise it with worldly learning. Students! Recognise this well, reflect on it, put this sacredness well into practice, and make the right effort to live by it and to show it to others as an ideal.