In plain words
Only for some time! We can stay here only until the work we have to do is done. After that we have no choice but to leave it and go. It is most necessary that we recognise this truth and act on it. Nothing in this world is permanent. We need not grieve for those who have passed away, and we need not rejoice over those who are born. No one can say what will become tomorrow of what was born today. Yesterday, today and tomorrow: you must regard all three as one. Past, future and present, all three are one. But our experiences take shape differently. We should not take them into ourselves at all. Time that has passed does not come back. Past is past. No one can say what the future will be. So it is the Present that matters to us. This is not the ‘ordinary present’ but the ‘Omnipresent’. For in it the ‘past’ is there, and the ‘future’ is there. So we must regard these three as one and experience Ānanda.
Students! All that you experience is untrue! Passing clouds! Everything comes and goes. You need not grieve over them. Once we have walked forward, why should we look back? We saw them already on our way forward, did we not! So we should grieve over nothing in the world. Some people grieve over their studies; they grieve over family matters too. Some women grieve, thinking of their husbands who have passed away: ‘He was there then; he is not here now!’ But the one who was there then, is there now and is there always is God alone! Seeing the ‘costumes’ that change along the way, we mistake them for the truth. That is only our own ‘imagination’! We must put this ‘imagination’ far from us and experience oneness. We think this is a new year. But where has this ‘new year’ come from? Without the ‘old’, the ‘new’ would not have come. The old becomes the new, and the new becomes the old.