In plain words
Put the body to good works and make good use of it!
Yet I am not telling you to renounce the body. As long as it lasts, look after it. Make good use of it, well. Set it on the good path. Win a good name. Live with a good purpose. If a knife is in a murderer's hand, he takes everyone's life. If a knife is in a doctor's hand, he cures disease. So the fault is not the knife's. The fault is his who holds it. In the bazaar a barber and a beedi-seller quarrelled with each other and came to blows. The knife grazed a hand slightly. At once a policeman comes, books a case and puts him in jail. Not even much blood is to be seen. For this alone it came to be so big a police case. What is the reason? This fellow has no authority to strike anyone with a knife. But there is a doctor. Tomorrow he will cut open your stomach. He declared, ‘I will do the operation.’ Relatives and friends, all of them, came. They took the body in. He cut. He set right the defect and put in stitches. They put him in the Intensive Care Unit. It healed. For a small knife cut they put a man in the police station. But why should they not put the doctor in jail? The doctor did good. That fellow did harm. Good and bad lie in the deeds done. Hanumān entered Laṅkā in search of Sītā. He set fire to everything. In those flames Laṅkā looked like broad daylight at night. Yet people bow to that Hanumān, calling him a great soul. Why? What he did was good. But if a small boy smokes a beedi and throws it on a heap, the house catches fire. Everyone grabs him and thrashes him, saying he burned the house. The one who burned the good is this boy. The one who burned the bad is Hanumān. Burn the bad that is in us. Bad qualities, bad thoughts, evil designs, wicked notions, envy, anger: burn up all these. Good qualities, good conduct, good behaviour, good character: make these grow. Then you will become truly ideal students.