In plain words
What use comes from this cleverness? They put this cleverness to work as a device, and by it they earn their bread. But this is not what matters for us. What need is there to go through so many hardships just to fill a belly a span wide?
To fill a belly a span wide, meeting with troubles, mastering a crore of skills with all zeal, yet failing to win perfect happiness, why should this human race wither away in sorrows? To the devotees who meditate on the Supreme beyond the highest, will He not show the way, O man! ‘I have read the books, I have gone through all the śāstras in full, I have learned matchless branches of learning,’ you say; why this pride? If you cannot fold your two hands and worship the Paramātma with Bhakti, these present-day learnings are all unstable, and will prove fruitless, O man!
Book and head, pustaka and mastaka, have become one. Putting all that is in the book into the head, putting all that is in the head into the book: this itself has become an education. Learning by heart all that is in the book. Going to the examination hall with what has been learnt by heart, and pouring it out onto that paper. Coming home again with an empty head. In the end, you become empty headed. What can we do with this empty head? We must fill our head with good qualities. Only then will life be worthwhile.
Into a skull with nothing in it you may put anything at all; when it is filled with this and that, will that skull become empty? Unless that skull is emptied, can merit be filled into it, here on earth!
If we are merely studying, this study is not true study.
Beat upon the anthill, and will the snake die? Punish your own body, and will the pleasures of the senses subside? Merely by giving up hunger and thirst, does one become a knower of the Ātma? If one does not know who one is, how can one become a knower of the Principle?
We must recognise this matter of ‘Who am I?’ That is, you call yourself by your name, ‘I am so-and-so’, but who are you? My name is this. Who gave this name? Parents gave it. Who gave this body? This is nothing but the gift of the parents. But who are you?