"What you want to be, do it whether you like it or not. What you don't want to be, avoid it, however much you are inclined to do it," he summed up.
Then he spoke about desire and impressed upon the audience that desire is not as bad as it is made out to be.
"We should learn to see desire as a privilege. On this planet, only human beings can desire. Animals can't. They are programmed to behave in a way and they do not have the faculty to desire. Have you seen Indian monkeys queuing up outside the US consulate? You don't. Because monkeys do not have that desire to go to the US," he said.
He said one can desire and be ambitious and yet contribute something to the society. "You enlarge your conglomerate. But you also should ensure that you contribute to the society in some manner. Thereby you prove yourself to be grown up person," he said.
He, however, warned the audience that a need becomes greed when it goes against dharma.
"You want to accomplish something. You are a go-getter. Go and get it! This is a need. Therefore go ahead. But when you indulge in unfair means, that will be going against the mandate of god and is wrong," he said.
He then rounded off the lecture with a word on crisis management. "We in India are an amazingly non-competitive society. The modern day demands have ushered in a very competitive environment."
"So there will be a crisis now and then. Who doesn't have a crisis? Only a crisis helps you discover the strength in you. It is how you approach it. At the end of the day, poverty is not about being without money. Real poverty is the poverty of the mind, poverty of the heart," he said.
Image: Monkeys squatting a facade of the defence ministry building in New Delhi. | Photograph: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images
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