In plain words
Now, at this age, you bear so many hardships. You study so many subjects. You sit so many examinations. All is impermanent. What is permanent is one thing, just one. That is Prema for God. A life that cannot gain this Prema: what use is it, however much it earns? However long one lives, at the very end one has to go with empty hands.
They have set the limit at a hundred years, but do not trust that word in your heart; in childhood, or else in youth, or else in old age, or else in decrepitude, in the village, in the forest, in the midst of the waters, where it will leave, no one knows. Death alone is certain; the man of understanding must know it himself while the body lasts.
We must work hard and earn, so that our life lacks nothing. Just as we breathe in the air, so we must give it out. Just as we take in food, so we must give that out too. We must earn money too. But we must give it out. It cannot be hoarded. What we must lay by is Dharma alone. That Dharma alone is our permanent property. We must recognise such a thing today.
In a village there were a miser and a great miser. The miser was the younger brother; the great miser was the elder. They had put away all the money they wanted. But not a single coin would cross the threshold. They would not eat a proper meal even to fill the stomach. They had piled up all they wanted. If the light burned five minutes longer, they were afraid the current would be spent. One day a near relative died in a nearby village. Going to that village and speaking there was a duty there was no avoiding. It was ten miles away. Thinking that the bus would cost five rupees, the elder brother set out to go on foot. He rose at dawn and packed two pieces of cloth. Then he told the younger brother to light a small oil lamp. By the light of the lamp he packed all these into a bag. He went. As soon as he had gone, the younger brother, a miser after all, put out the lamp. The oil would be spent. In half an hour the elder brother came back. He had walked three miles. He walked three miles back again and returned. Six miles. He knocked at the door.