In plain words
Without understanding that, however many services we do, there is no use in them. When we keep the mind full of impurity and merely do services, calling them acts of Dharma, acts of Dharma, that can bring no fruit at all.
Where there are evil thoughts in the head, ears that listen to slander, eyes that lie in wait to spy, a mind that listens at the eaves, a citta of crooked qualities, a heart that deceives: the moment it sees these qualities, Dharma will stay no longer, brother.
In that heart this thing called Dharma cannot stand at all. Dharma is the very form of God. That Dharma rests in equal-mindedness. In these services we must gain the equal-mindedness in which there is neither sinking under troubles nor swelling at pleasures.
All the supreme devotees of those days kept putting this equal-mindedness into practice. Many know Tukārām. He was a supreme devotee. He had half an acre of land. He would somehow grow something on it or let it dry out, and so it went on, his stomach now filled, now left to burn; but paying no heed at all to his own food and comfort, he ceaselessly kept up the thought of God alone. He had a wife and children. But once, because rains fell on his land, he planted a field of sugar cane. His heart was full of tyāga. It was not bound up with enjoyment. By the time it came to harvest, the people going that way and this way along that road, "Grandfather, grandfather! Will you give us a cane?", they would ask. He would tell all who asked to cut it and take it away. Such was his tyāga, poor man. As it went on like this, in the end three parts of all the cane were used up in gifts to others. They left behind, as it were, some cane or other, a little here and there, that was of no use to them. He cut that, loaded it into the cart and was coming home. On that road all the children gathered in a crowd and kept asking, "Give me a piece of cane." There too he kept giving it away all along the road. By the time he came near the house, one small piece of cane was left. She saw the cart. The wife flared up. "What is the matter with you? Have you no wife and children at home? What did you think would become of them? While you drown yourself in your gifts and your acts of Dharma. Having married me, need you not fulfil your duty?" In this way the wife rained down a shower of questions. To all of them that Tukārām danced about with smiles. At the very end he gave one answer. "Here, I have brought a cane for you," he said. As he put it into her hand, she felt very hurt. Anger rose in her too. She took that piece of cane and struck it on his legs. A small piece broke off and fell down.