In plain words
Life must be bound by discipline. A life without discipline turns into a meaningless life. 'Na śreyo niyamaṃ vinā': if there is no discipline, there is no good. In the Tamil land, the Tamil Veda is the Tirukkuṟaḷ. The one who wrote it is Tiruvaḷḷuru. He kept a certain discipline in his life. Every day, at the time he ate, he would tell his wife to put water in a small cup and to set a needle beside it. Every day his wife set them out. But not once did he use them. One day a doubt arose in her. At a time when he was very happy: Tell me, every day you ask for water and a needle to be set out, yet not once have I seen you use them. Why do you ask for them to be set out? He said: If a grain of rice should fall down while I am eating, I meant to lift it with the needle, wash it in that water and eat it again; with that intention I kept that discipline, but the water and the needle have never had the least work to do. That is my good fortune, he said. In the same way, only when we keep a certain discipline in life do we have the chance to waste nothing and to make everything sacred.
But the conduct of today's devotees is the opposite of this. They merely keep doing nāmasmaraṇa. They do bhajan. They do japa. They do dhyāna. But they grieve that God's grace has not come to them through it. There is a fine example of this in the Rāmāyaṇa.
Hanumān entered Laṅkā. He went all over, round and round, and at long last, in a garden of great beauty, there was a tulasi grove, most attractive. Seeing the tulasi grove, Hanumān was greatly astonished. What have these rākṣasas to do with tulasi? Taking a small form, he entered that tulasi grove. As he entered that tulasi grove, wherever he looked in it, the Name of Rāma was written: Śrī Rāma, Śrī Rāma. He saw it. Is this Rāvaṇa's māyā, or the glory of my Rāmacandra? Are there people in Laṅkā who worship Rāma? he wondered in astonishment. He went and reached the window. Just then, in the bed room, Vibhīṣaṇa was trying to rise in the brahma-muhūrta.