In plain words
Moment by moment, many changes keep on happening. So you need not think about what great changes are going to happen in the new year. What happened in the year gone by will happen again in the year to come. It is not about those that you must think. However many years go by, man does not give up his evil thoughts and develop sacred feelings. First of all, bad qualities and bad thoughts must be given up. In this new year you must foster sacred feelings. You must forget this world, made of what is seen, behold the principle of the Ātma, which is beyond the senses, and experience Ānanda.
Embodiments of Prema! Neither happiness nor Ānanda comes to us from wealth and gold, possessions and vehicles. From other people it does not come at all. Ānanda springs from the heart alone. So turn your gaze towards the heart. Recognise the truth: “Antarbahiśca tatsarvaṃ vyāpya nārāyaṇa sthitaḥ.” Man thirsts for Ānanda. But there is no need to search for Ānanda outside. Ānanda is with us in our own home, close behind us, right at our side. When we develop the inner vision, Ānanda appears before us without our calling it. Man is scrambling after physical pleasures. What are these pleasures?
A hovel of filth, a servant’s basket wasting with disease, born to be stirred about, a tuber, a thornbush that cannot cross the sea of worldly life, a quiver of arrows: rise and see! When you think of the peril we are in, this body, do not trust it to stand firm, O mind! Take refuge at the feet of Hari.
With a body like this, how can we have lasting happiness? Hari’s feet alone give us lasting happiness. To think of Hari is true happiness. But today, in Bhārata, Bhakti and surrender are wasting away. The mind wanders, deluded, after physical, worldly things. What are these delusions? What are these pleasures? All this looks like nothing but a puppet show.