In plain words
For our having studied, for our having risen to such a high level in Swami's College, what gratitude do we give in return? A girl who is president of the old girl students said this. What are we doing? ‘What is the gratitude we give to God in return?’ she asked. Girl students! Whichever way others go, you must keep your feelings high, go into society and take part in service to the community. It is true. As that girl said, in a while women become housewives and have to move within many bonds, under the wishes of the parents-in-law and the commands of the husband. In keeping with Indian culture, in India they do not have so much freedom of their own. But boys have their freedom wherever they go. Whatever job they take up, whatever business they do, whatever country they go to, there is no one to stand in their way. If they resolve to do service, they can do anything. But unfortunately such sacred feelings do not come to them. Women, though they have such sacred feelings, are left without freedom. So from today at least, I hope that the boy students and the girl students, as a mark of gratitude for having studied in our Institute, will do service, follow sacred conduct themselves, and give others an ideal life. To swell with pride that we are greatly educated just because we have taken degrees is madness. To waste all our education only for the sake of filling the belly is madness too. The studies you have studied, your learning, you must use to turn your fellow men to the right path and lead them onto the sacred path.
To fill a belly a span wide you suffer troubles; a crore of arts you learn with zeal, and still you cannot gain perfect happiness: why should this human race languish in sorrows? The glorious Supreme: to the devotees who meditate on Him, will He not show the way, O man?
Will He not show the way to those who meditate on God with Bhakti?
From the time you rise from sleep until you go to sleep again, for the belly's sake you spend without limit or reckoning, pour out your life on your learning and forget the lotus-petal-eyed Lord: what great happiness have you gained? Think it over gladly, O man!
Forgetting God and spending twenty-four hours in this learning, can any of you tell what you have achieved? Do you enjoy even a little Śānti or happiness of any kind?