In plain words
Some hundreds of people brought him to the burning ground. That is his place. As many as were needed came. They laid him there. They set fire to him. They went away. Here was poor Hariścandra. An emperor. Never had he seen such a sight. Poor man, he kept lifting all the wood that had fallen down. The corpse has to burn completely. Then they place a big log on the corpse. Why? Because if the fire reaches the whole spinal cord, the corpse sits up. So, to keep it from rising, they place a big log. All these who had come were big moneylenders, were they not! "What is this, putting such a big log on his chest? Take it off," they said. After a while it sat up. Poor man, he watched: this man had woken again, life had come back! Again it fell down. Then Hariścandra thought,
Taking this world of Māyā, beyond measure, to be eternal, in delusion, 'my wife', 'my son', as long as life was in it, how this body of yours did fret! Now as it burns here among the logs, that wife does not come, nor does the son come along to save you.
So he grieved deeply. Hariścandra recognised this truth. It spares no one, whoever he may be. Neither the millionaire nor the man too poor for a meal. My life too is just that, he thought. Without recognising this truth, what kind of people have practised how many kinds of ideals! That is what Hariścandra did. How many take him as their ideal! They are going to Kāśī, leaving the whole kingdom. What is the reason? To pay off the debt to Viśvāmitra. Poor Candramatī is coming right behind. And there is this Nakṣatraka. He keeps tormenting them at every turn. "When will you pay? When will you pay?" Then the wife speaks. They lived bound closely to each other. "We have fallen into this sea of sorrow. If we swim against it, we reach the shore. If we tire, we drown. If we swim on, we reach the shore. We shall win through this. If we tire, we drown. We must swim." Only because they gave each other this courage did Hariścandra keep to Satya so greatly. So you must learn to give each other counsel that gives courage. All of this is itihāsa.
Jābāli too argued with Rāma. "Rāma! You are mad. Daśaratha must keep the word Daśaratha gave; why are you acting this way?" "In this Ikṣvāku line a word once spoken must not be broken. Whether the father breaks it or I break it, the two of us are one. Our line is one. No dishonour of any kind must come to the line. I must not bring any stain on our dynasty. Whoever breaks it, there comes to My dynasty