Passage 5

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In plain words

First of all you must enter good company. Whatever kind of people you make friends with, just such qualities will rise up in you. Tell me your company, I shall tell you what you are. So if you join good company, only good feelings will arise in you. If instead, as soon as you join school, you take to bad friendships, bad wanderings and bad conduct, your life will be ruined completely. You may think, ‘We are studying well, aren't we?’ However well you study, if the qualities within are not right, what use is it? At this tender age itself, many kinds of bad thoughts are rising in you. ‘This is the effect of age. It is only natural,’ you think. But this is not natural at all. It is completely unnatural. Because impure food goes into your stomach, impure thoughts are rising in you. If impure thoughts are not to come, you must give up impure food. Those on the path of Bhakti must enter good company. Once bad thoughts have come, it is hard to hold them back. So we must foster good intentions, so that bad thoughts do not come.

Children! If you fall into bad company and pass your time with wicked thoughts and wicked conduct, your parents, unable to speak of it openly, suffer inwardly. But when you lead your life on the good path, your parents rejoice greatly. So first of all you must travel on the Good path. You must make your parents happy. Only then can you receive a pure fruit. For man, three things matter most: 1. intention. 2. conduct, 3. result. From wicked thoughts, bad qualities and wicked conduct you get only bad results. When all that you eat, where you go and what you enjoy is impure, will good thoughts come to you rather than bad ones? To keep evil intentions within and yet want good results is simply not possible.