In plain words
We must believe that this Naraka Caturdaśī day came about for driving out bad qualities. We must drive out the bad qualities that lead into the pit of hell. ‘Nara’ has another meaning: the Ātma. What gave this Ātma its room is space. From space came air, from air fire, from fire water, from water earth. So what does space mean? They said that Nārāyaṇa is the very form of nāra. Nāra means water. Nārāyaṇa is the One who is the dwelling of the five elements. We should grieve for Nārāyaṇa, not for the world. Many people keep weeping on many occasions. What is this weeping for?
You wept when you were born, you wept when you died; in between you weep over worldly things, for one reason or another; when Dharma declined, did you weep to raise it up? Did you ever weep for the One whose form is Satya? What did you weep for? You wept for the sake of weeping!
No, no. We must not weep over everything. We must weep for God. That is the very mark of the true man. For whom should we weep? We should weep for the Lord. We should weep for God. Nāra means water. Nayana means the eyes. Nāra + nayana = Nārāyaṇa. ‘The streams that come from our eyes are for Nārāyaṇa alone! We should not weep for the world’: that is its inner meaning. We should weep for God. But are these holy streams from our eyes to be shed for Prakṛti? So the water that comes from our eyes must be offered to Nārāyaṇa alone. That is: the leaf is the body, the flower is the heart, the fruit is the mind, and the water means tears of Ānanda. These we must offer to God. It does not mean thinking of the water as plain water and offering God water from some tap or some well.