In plain words
If nothing but bad thoughts and bad notions come, how will the Paramātma rest in such a heart? When we sit outside for our own wants, we spread a newspaper or a handkerchief beneath us and sit. When we spread a clean cloth even for this unclean body, how pure must the heart be for God, ever pure, awakened and free, to sit in it! We must do good deeds for purity of mind alone. We need do no other japa, dhyāna or yoga. With good words and good ways of seeing, the heart turns good. If the heart is not pure, what use is any amount of japa, dhyāna and bhajans?
The cart in front, the horse behind!
The health of the mind is more important than the health of the body. The body is like the cart, the mind like the horse. Only when the horse is in front with the cart behind it does the journey go on. But today, the cart is in front and the horse behind! All our time goes just in adorning the body. We do not give the mind its proper fodder. Good company, good conduct, good reflection and good thoughts are the proper fodder for the mind. That is why, if we act with the feeling ‘Whatever we do is for God's pleasure’, every action stays pure.
In the power of the devotee
There was a woman devotee. She was a devotee of Kṛṣṇa. Every day she rose early, smeared Kṛṣṇa's shrine neatly with cow dung, decorated it and had lamps lit. The dung left over she would throw outside, saying ‘Kṛṣṇārpaṇam’. The priest of the village Kṛṣṇa temple, after performing abhiṣeka in the morning, was distressed, not knowing where the dung falling on Kṛṣṇa's face was coming from. After watching for two days, he told the village elders about it. They too came to the temple, and right at the time of ārati they saw dung come from somewhere and fall on Kṛṣṇa's face. To find out who was throwing the dung, he posted watchmen on every street around the temple. On one street, a watchman saw a housewife come out of her house and throw down dung, saying ‘Kṛṣṇārpaṇam’. ‘The one throwing the dung is a woman,’ he reported. They watched it all: her throwing the dung out here, saying Kṛṣṇārpaṇam.