Passage 7

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In plain words

Only then will your life be full of Ānanda.

There must be love of country; attachment to the body is not fitting

Students! Games and songs are certainly needed for the body's physical health and for the growth of the mind. But you must use your body for the service of society. What use is a body that does no service, or a head that does no enquiry? Before doing any task, you must enquire whether it is good or bad. You must offer your physical, mental and spiritual powers to God. Do not be deluded, thinking that you have had a great education and will go abroad and earn grandly. Recognise that true wealth lies within you. Do not forget your motherland. The land of your birth is your mother. Can you leave your mother because she is ugly and call another woman, a beautiful one, your mother? To forget your motherland in a craze for foreign lands is just the same! “Jananī janmabhūmiśca svargādapi garīyasi.” Mother and motherland are greater than heaven. People of any country must have love for their own country. But keep your love for the country; do not keep attachment to the body. What is the body like?

The body made of the five elements is frail; somewhere, some day, it must fall; they have set its span at a hundred years, but do not trust that word in your heart; in childhood, or in the prime of youth, or else in old age, or in extreme old age; in a village, in a forest, or in the midst of water; where it will be left, no one knows. Death alone is certain for man; to grow wise while the body is still there and to know oneself is the principle of Dharma: see this.