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 concoction you cook will be highly poisonous! So ‘tin’ your heart with truth, right conduct, peace and divine love, it will then become a vessel fit for repeating holy name or symbols, 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. One may study all text-books of spiritual practice, all scriptures, and may even lecture for hours on them; but one will slip into error when temptation confronts. Like land that is parched, the heart may appear to be 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!