In plain words
But we must examine them by discerning the lasting from the passing, and with Vijñāna and discrimination; we must ask ourselves which is best for my future, which protects my honour and dignity, which upholds humanness, and develop only the thoughts that favour it. Contrary thoughts must be defeated. We must make a fitting effort to put them far from us. If instead we try to hide our thoughts in secret, it carries us to a still more dangerous level. We have to kill each such thought, or uproot it, or develop a holy thought opposed to the thought that came. You will have seen it, or read of it in books. Of the bird called the ostrich. The ostrich lives in desert regions. It is very tall. It stands nearly ten feet high. When the ostrich sees the hunters who have come to hunt it, it puts its head into the sand and thinks, ‘No one has seen me.’ But the hunters come and kill the ostrich. In the same way, if we try to keep the evil thoughts within us covered up, our face shows the form of those thoughts. Through that there is a chance of some harm. So we must neither keep our thoughts covered up nor proclaim them. If we proclaim a thought, our honour is damaged. Honour turns to dishonour. If we keep them covered, they lie like seeds and, as time and occasion allow, come up like plants and bring danger. That is why we must make no attempt at all either to proclaim them or to hide them away. We must uproot them. Only then shall we experience the power of thought in the right way. Not only that: thought is such that it shows itself on the notice board called the face.
When someone is sad: “You seem very sad; why are you like this today? Your face looks strange,” we ourselves warn him. What is the reason? The good and the bad within a person are reflected on the face. So the chief secret in humanness is this: the mind dwells, subtle, in the gross body. Our face shows the subtle mind in visible form. We must try to recognise the inseparable bond between these two.