In plain words
If you do not speak the truth, it is just as if one life-breath in you has gone! If you do not practise Dharma, it is just as if the second life-breath too has gone! If you behave harshly, without Prema, it is just as if the third life-breath too has gone! Once these three have gone, how can you have Śānti! Where these four are absent, how can Ahiṃsā stand! Where there is faith, there is Prema. Where there is Prema, there is Śānti. Only where there is Śānti is there Satya. Only where there is Satya is God present. Only where God is present is there Ānanda. So Ānanda is gained from faith itself. Man longs for Ānanda. But it is not something so easily gained. Ānanda is the form of Brahman. To experience such Ānanda you must take great pains. But it is not toil done with the body. First of all you must give up the vices and the evil thoughts in the heart. You must fill the heart with virtues and good thoughts. The heart is the place where God dwells. You must not let it be spoiled by vices. To root out the impurity in the heart, you must do some sādhana. Without effort no task bears fruit. A small example. Your eyes have seen a fruit on a tree. But do you get the fruit the moment you see it? No. You must go near the tree. You must bend your back. You must take a stone in your hand. You must throw the stone so that the fruit falls down. Once the fruit has fallen, you must take it up with your fingers. You must put it in your mouth. You must chew it with your teeth. You must swallow it down your throat. You see! If so much effort is needed just for a fruit on a tree to reach your stomach, you can think for yourselves how much more effort is needed to experience Ānanda, the very form of Brahman. This body has been given for this very purpose. ‘The body is indeed the first means of Dharma.’ The body came only for the practice of Dharma, not merely to eat, roam about and die. Since you have taken a human body, you must give this world an ideal.
The path to Mukti
Man today, whether he does japa, does tapas or does dhyāna, does it all for his own selfish ends alone, not for the good of others. Whatever sādhanas you do with selfishness, they are of no use. You say, ‘We are doing dhyāna to see God.’ But it is not enough if you alone see God. You must give that Ānanda to the whole world. Take part in service while remembering God. When you serve one who has no strength, think, ‘He himself is God.’ At the sight of a corpse, a sick man and an old man, the Buddha's mind changed utterly. Seeing those who suffer, his heart melted. But how many corpses you have seen! How many sick people you have seen! How many old people you have seen! Even so your mind does not change. Your heart does not melt. If you are to attain Mukti, you must merge in Prema. You must follow Satya and Dharma. Bend the body, mend the senses, end the mind. You must root out the mind. For the mind to be rooted out, you must curb the senses. Your conduct rests on your resolves. The resolves themselves turn into the mind. So first of all, all your resolves must take shape as true resolves. Only then is the mind rooted out. Why is the world today not as it ought to be? Your resolves are not as they ought to be.
The highest sādhana
From the moment you rise from sleep in the morning till you go back to sleep at night, you toil in many ways for your stomach, without limit or reckoning.