In plain words
That is not the way. We must work in the very village we are in. We must shape the village into an ideal village. In the beginning I lived in the old Mandir. The Maharani of Mysore came. You had to come to Karnatakapalli and walk from there. ‘Swami! If You stay in this village, it is hard for all the devotees who come. Come over there. We will give You all the land You need. We will have an āśram built,’ she said. ‘I do not need those āśrams. I do not need those lands. This land itself is My land. “Mother and motherland are greater even than heaven.” To you it looks like a village now. Watch in the days to come how much it grows,’ I said. Little Puttaparthi, with a population of 150. If it came to voting, just 100 votes. See how much it has become now. What vast lands have come to it! Could a university ever come to this little village? No, no. An aerodrome has come up. Big cities do not have an aerodrome. A great hospital. Do all these belong to a village? Or do they belong to a city? All the villagers have prospered. We must make this village into a town. If instead you abandon the village and go away, the village goes to ruin. Those who trust in the land will never know want. Śrīnātha came to Potana: ‘Brother-in-law, sir! You are suffering with no food to eat. If you dedicate your Bhāgavatam to this king, he will give you all the money you need,’ he said. Then Potana spoke. ‘“This tender maiden of poetry, soft as the fresh shoots of a young mango tree”: am I to take this Sarasvatī and dedicate her to that king? I will till my own land and live. I will not dedicate my sacred story to a king. I will dedicate it to Rāma alone. I will dedicate it to God, but I will not dedicate it to others,’ he said. What is the use of dedicating it to others? Money may come. What happiness is there from money? How much happiness does money give? Śaṅkarācārya too said this very thing. He was going to the Gaṅgā to bathe, with eleven disciples. Under a tree a man was learning Pāṇini's grammar by rote, ‘Ḍukṛñ karaṇe, ḍukṛñ karaṇe.’