In plain words
If we go before a mirror and do namaskāra, the image too does namaskāra to us. If you strike that image, it strikes you too. ‘Yadbhāvaṃ tadbhavati’.
If we want to live in Ānanda, in happiness and in Śānti, we must first live with Śānti in the mind
All good and bad lie within us. They lie in our conduct. Everything is within us. So, if we want to live in Ānanda, in happiness and in Śānti, we must first have Śānti in the mind. If there is unrest in us, how can we give Śānti to another? We cannot give it. So first of all we must have Śānti. Each of us has some hardships of our own. ‘Why should I share my hardship out among ten more people?’: so thinking, keep your hardship within yourself. Not only that, some children have bad thoughts. That age is like that. When bad thoughts come, they fret, ‘How am I to control them?’ You need not control them. It is enough to enquire. It will run away of itself. How should you enquire? ‘This bad thought has come into me. I am not a beast, I am a human being. I am not a beast, to take in what is bad. All this is the thinking of beasts. I am not a beast, I am a man, I am a man’: if you think so, they run away. If you think, ‘I am not a beast’, all these bad feelings run away. That is how we must control it. If you put thoughts into action the moment they come, it is all over. Is this good? Is it bad? Is this wrong? Is it not wrong? Give room to enquiry of that kind. As you go on with that enquiry, the force of this thought within dies down. It is the weakness in human nature: we always give room only to the bad. We do not give room to the good. We eat our meals in the hostel or at home. While we eat this meal, ever so many grains of rice go in.