Passage 1

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In plain words

The sun seems gentle now; the days have grown short; the cold wind sharpens its bite; in the fields, by the dim moonlight of night, the farmers at the threshing heaps lift their voices and begin to sing their songs; stringing garlands of pearls on the hemp fields with their yellow flowers, scattering a vermilion gleam over the ripe chillies, opening wide the faces of the marigolds, setting the wealth of grain in our homes, the lovely month of Puṣya has come!

Man needs all things! But nothing in this world is permanent. All are passing clouds! Whatever we think is steady turns out to be unsteady. If we wish to hold on to what is permanent, true and eternal, there is only one way for us. “Mamaivāṃśo jīvaloke jīvabhūtaḥ sanātanaḥ”: ‘Everyone in this world is a part of Me; I am in all’: this is what the Bhagavad Gītā teaches mankind. I am in you, with you, around you, above you and below you. You must recognise this truth and act on it. “The Lord of all beings”; “All this world is clothed in the Lord.” Nowhere in the world will you find a place where God is not, or a form that is not God’s. But man cannot recognise this truth: “Wherever I look, I see only human beings! I do not see God!”: that is what he thinks. “Yadbhāvaṃ tadbhavati.” Whatever dress you wear when you stand before a mirror, that very dress is what you see in the mirror. In the same way, your own feelings and your own thoughts are reflected in the mirror that is the world. Whether they are good or bad, their ‘reflection, reaction, resound’ come back to you alone. The ‘sound’ that goes out from you comes back to you as ‘resound’. Whatever words you speak, those same words come back to you as a ‘reply’.