In plain words
Not only do they give fruit all the days they live; even in death they give their bodies, split apart: for the spirit of sacrifice, the trees are the very teachers. What I tell is the plain truth.
It is not that there are none among today's teachers who are truly given to sacrifice. If you want to uplift the country, you must uplift the students. When the students become good, the whole world itself becomes good. Teachers are like a tank; the students can be compared to taps. Only when there is pure water in the tank will pure water come in the taps too. So, if pure feelings are to grow in the students, first of all the teacher must fill his own heart with pure feelings. “Only he who teaches virtues, a good Buddhi, constant dedication, Bhakti, discipline and the doing of one's duty is the teacher; the student must learn them.” Only when the teacher is an example to follow will the system of education in the country improve. If a teacher goes bad, many hundreds of students go bad. Teachers, drinking, smoking... ...when they fall prey to these and other bad habits, the students see them and learn those bad ways too. So the teacher must give the students an example through good deeds and good conduct. A teacher must have devotion to God. One who has no devotion to God is no teacher at all. If you are to teach many children, bring them on and shape them into people others can follow, devotion to God is essential above all. Therefore the teacher must develop divine feelings. The drill master says, “One, two, three, four....” and does the drill himself to show the children, and so he teaches them. In the same way, the teacher must teach the children human values by showing them in practice. Only then will what he teaches touch the children's hearts. The teacher is like a ‘guide post’. If the ‘guide post’ is not steady, it turns this way and that and cannot show travellers the right road.