In plain words
How many days have I come searching, my friend, my girl — for my Guru's service to be granted me! That Brahman, the Real, alone is true; that all the worlds are unreal-seeming — He who told me the reasoning, who gave me his grace, who showed me the way to liberation — Listen, my friend, my girl, you who are forever longing after mind, intellect and thought: He who pushed aside the māyā they call root-nature and gave me service at his feet — Did we keep up the daily obligatory rites? — oh my friend, my girl. Did we mind the path of right conduct all this while? The vow of truth, austerity and giving, the practices — did we do any of them? The Guru's feet that gave me my standing — that the eternal Real is Brahman. Did we go bathing our way through ten million rivers? — oh my friend, my girl. Did we go round every temple? — did we seek out the seven times ten million mantras and mutter them through, each one by its rule? Him who shoved the crafty māyā aside and gave me standing in liberation while still living. Did we keep up the recitation of the Name? — oh my friend, my girl. Did we sit and hear the good, good stories? Did we hand over the fruit of our action, wanting nothing from it, to the Cause of all? Him who cut down the jungle they call ritual action and gave me kaivalya. Worship of Śiva, worships of Viṣṇu — oh my friend, my girl: is this the fruit of all that we went on doing, my girl, that he drove out the disease of becoming itself, a learned physician to those grown ripe, and made his descent and came, by the strength of the Self's own power? Food and clothing, given in support — oh my friend, my girl: did we ever put them into the hand of one who abides in the Self? He laid the Vedas and the Vedāntas open, every one of them, and by the hearing of them, Pushing the sentence neti neti, ‘not this, not this’, aside — the Guru's feet that gave me my standing. There are those who read Veda and śāstra — out in the world there are; there are those who win the powers they want. He put down the creeds along with the quarrelling, made it all nothing but the Real and left it so — Him who did away with the elements and their changing and gave the state of fullness. Every place I looked and looked — oh my friend, my girl — once I had merged into the very form of supreme Brahman, its own nature, that makes name and form show themselves made of awareness, made of That, and keeps them so — Venkateśvara's own self-luminous very form.