You may have the best of vegetables, you may be the most capable cook, but if the copper vessel in which you prepare the vegetable soup is not tinned, the dish you cook will be highly poisonous! So ‘tin’ your heart with satya, dharma, shanti and prema (truth, right conduct, peace and divine love), it will then become a vessel fit for repeating the holy name, and for meditation, religious vows, pilgrimage, ritualistic worship and other dishes that you prepare in it. It is an uphill task to reform one's tendencies and character. You may study all the text-books of spiritual practice, all the scriptures, and may even lecture for hours on them, but you will slip into error when temptation confronts you. The heart may appear like a land that is parched and free from any crop of evil, but when the first showers fall, the seeds and roots underneath the soil change the waste into a carpet of green. That is why the human values are so essential.

- Divine Discourse, Jan 13, 1965.