In plain words
Everything happens according to our feeling.
However much you earn, you cannot escape going empty-handed
Looking on the body as merely an instrument, we must carry out the actions that are our duty. We must not imagine instead that the body is permanent and plan to earn a great deal of money for its sake. However much one earns, in the very end it is all in vain, in vain, in vain! How many millionaires have been born in this world! Are they all here today? Not one of them remains forever. Once upon a time Alexander conquered all the lands and came wanting to conquer India too. But by the time he got here, he had a heart attack. He realised that his last hour had now drawn near. He called together his prime minister and the other officers and said to them, “I shall be no more. Take my dead body back to our own land. Set my hands facing upward and carry me in procession through street after street. ‘Alexander conquered the whole world. But when he went, he went with nothing but empty hands’: the people must come to know this.” Everyone is just the same! However much one earns, when one goes, one cannot escape going with nothing but empty hands. All that one gains in worldly ways becomes worthless in the end. Why worry over things like these? Do the work you have to do. Live the way you ought to live. Do not worry needlessly about things that will come some day or other.
Prema and Satya: these two alone are permanent. ‘There is no Dharma higher than Satya.’ There are many duties and works of Dharma that we must carry out with this body. But what we should long for is Prema alone. Where Prema is, there alone is Ānanda; there alone is the true bond. Where there is no Prema there is no Ānanda, and no bond of any kind. A man sets out a feast of every kind of dainty and sweet rice on a plate and sits down to eat it happily. But the instant he learns that his son has been run over by a car in the bazaar and died, he pushes that plate aside and runs to the bazaar. Where did the love he had for the meal until then go? Why push aside the food he had so looked forward to?