In plain words
This very thing was the chief ideal of the Pāṇḍavas. When Draupadī was humiliated in the court, when Abhimanyu was put to many kinds of torment and his life taken, when Aśvatthāmā cut the throats of the Upapāṇḍavas, when they performed the Rājasūya sacrifice, won very great fame and enjoyed the comforts it brought, and in their life in the forest: through all these hardships, losses and sorrows they never feared in the least, never swelled with pride, never sank, but went on chanting only Kṛṣṇa's name without a break. They waited for Kṛṣṇa's Prema alone. Hardships and sorrows: all these are passing clouds. Truly, mother and father, wife and children, all such people: for how many births they have been coming along with us, in how many births you became a husband to them, in how many births they became your wife, in how many births they became your mother and father. Do we remember all these? However much these change, God does not change. He remains one and the same. We must grow a close bond with that unchanging principle; with a changing principle, it grows only into a Prema that changes.
What shows forth the nature that searches, asking, ‘Where is that unchanging Lord?’, is yajña. Yat + jña makes yajña. Yat: its meaning is, ‘Who is the foundation of this world?’ Jña means searching for where such a One is. The very effort that searches for where the Puruṣa is, the foundation of all creation, is yajña. But then, a searching for where He is. The Veda declared this very thing on another occasion: ‘Antarbahiśca tatsarvam vyāpya nārāyaṇa sthitaḥ.’ He who fills everything, within and without, everywhere, is God. Where are we to search for Him who is there wherever we look? Why search at all? Yet all these maharṣis went on doing tapas to solve this problem. In the end they recognised this truth. They taught the world: ‘Vedāhametaṃ puruṣaṃ mahāntaṃ ādityavarṇaṃ tamasaḥ parastāt.’ Where is He who is full of Vedānta, He who is full of great radiance? As to where this Supreme Puruṣa, radiant as the sun, is, it showed that He is beyond the tamo-guṇa called tamas. Since He is beyond the tamo-guṇa, we must now inquire and drive out the tamas that is in us. He is staying behind this screen called tamas. In Tamil too they say, ‘Cross the Penna and there is Perumāḷ.’ Only when we cross this Penna called tamas does this God appear. When the tamo-guṇa is dancing its wild dance from the feet to the head, how then is God to be reached by us?