In plain words
'Slip with the foot and no harm comes; slip with the tongue and it is hell,' they said. When we misuse this tongue, it wounds the heart beyond measure. Doctors who can heal this wound are not to be found in this world.
When these senses meet their objects, they give endless joy, and endless sorrow too. Your senses are here. Someone out there is abusing you. This abuse is outside. Your senses are here. But until that matter of abuse reaches your senses, you feel no disturbance of any kind. You give no room to agitation. You do not get excited. But when that same matter reaches your ears, you are filled with anger, with agitation, with excitement, as much as can be. What is the cause of the agitation, of this excitement? So long as the objects stay in the senses, no agitation of any kind comes. Only when the object joins the senses does this agitation start. When we look into the same thing another way: someone out there is praising you. They are extolling you as a very good man, a man of virtue. Until you hear it, no Prema for him, no joy, arises in you. When that same matter touches your senses, you love him with joy, as much as can be. What is the cause of this Prema and of hatred? The bond of the tongue and the senses is the root cause of this; so only when we keep the objects at some distance can the senses gain a peaceful life. Or, when the objects and the senses come together, if you have developed a sense of harmony, you feel no disturbance at all. So to check the senses is not such an easy path. To bring them into harmony is a very easy path. Neither swelling nor sinking at this excitement and this elation, you must enquire in a spirit of equanimity. You are not the senses. You are not the body. Only when we strengthen the faith 'I am the Ātma itself, whose form is unbroken Ānanda' can the troubles of these senses go far from us. With this unbroken faith alone we can set humanness on the sacred path and win the divine treasure, the divine presence.