In plain words
This is not what we should do; we should offer what is dear to us. This is precisely what Pārvatī taught Nandīśvara. “O Nandīśvara! Whatever is dear to you, offer that to My son. Then He will give you what is dear to Him,” She said.
‘The Rider on the Mouse’ means…
Vināyaka is the Rider on the Mouse. Why did He come by this name? The mouse is a sign of darkness. Darkness means Ajñāna. The mouse is the creature that moves about in the dark; where there is a light it does not move about. So ‘the Rider on the Mouse’ means the one who has trodden down the darkness of Ajñāna. There is another meaning to this as well. For the mouse, smell is what matters most. By the smell it can find out where any thing is. It is through the vāsanās of past births that man in this worldly life falls into many wrong ways. Vāsanās means desires. So the one who has trodden down desires is the Rider on the Mouse. Do you see! How sacred are the inner meanings in ‘the Rider on the Mouse’! Without recognising these, some people wonder, “Why should Vināyaka, with His big belly, travel on a little mouse?” The mouse is not His vehicle; its meaning is that He is the one who has trodden down Ajñāna, the one who has curbed desires.
Vivekānanda's eyes are opened
Whatever God says, whatever He does, it is for you and not for Himself. In God there is never any selfishness. According to the nature of your own guṇas you think of God as this kind or that kind, but no one can truly understand God's principle of Prema. There is a little story about this in Vivekānanda's life. When his father died, Vivekānanda came home from Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṃsa. One day he went to the market in the next village to bring back provisions. As he was coming home with the provisions, a downpour began. When there was no sign of the rain stopping, he went onto the verandah of a flower-seller's house to shelter for the night. After a while two women who sold fish also came and lay down on that verandah. But however long they lay, they could not sleep. The elder sister sat up. “Oh, sister! I cannot sleep because of the smell of these wretched flowers,” she said. Then the younger sister, “Sister! Put your fish basket under your head, and the smell of the flowers will go. You will sleep soundly,” she advised her. Vivekānanda listened closely to all this talk. “Oho! More than the flowers that give fragrance, these women like fish, which stink. As their saṃskāras are, so are their feelings, are they not!” he thought to himself. The next day he rose before dawn and set out for his village. On the way he saw a man lying unconscious on the bank of a canal. Just then two thieves came along the same road and saw the man. “This fellow, whoever he is, has been stealing all night like us, got roaring drunk and fallen down in a stupor,” they said, and went off laughing.