In plain words
You … all over the sticks. You do all sorts of things. It is the vāsanā of a past birth. The nature of a monkey's birth. We must not keep all these near us. We must keep good things near us. Kaṇṭhasya bhūṣaṇaṃ satyam. Truth must always come in our words. ‘Charity is the ornament of the hand,’ they said. Along with charity, we must also wear the ring received in God's grace. Many say, ‘What do we need all these for?’ Only people who cannot recognise the truth fall prey to such feelings.
What is culture? Culture is precisely what has been refined. How? Paddy is growing. Do we eat what has grown just as it is? We separate the grain from the straw. You separate the husk on the grain. You cook the rice and make it into food. You eat only after it has been cooked on the fire. Once the fire has refined it, it turns into food. Separating it from the straw, separating it from the husk, its being refined in the fire, and after that your eating it. This is saṃskāra. That is, removing all that is bad, removing the straw and the husk, cooking the rice and eating it: that is saṃskāra. A bag of paddy is two hundred rupees. But a bag of refined rice is a thousand rupees. By refining, the value has gone up. Through saṃskāra the value rises and it becomes pure. To put away the bad and nourish the good: that is saṃskāra. That is the way of life.
The food we eat must be pure. This is a silver plate. If silver stays mere silver, we cannot put it to use. By refining the silver, putting it in the fire and beating it with a hammer, it became a handy plate. This is a cloth. How did it come to be? First it came as cotton. From the cotton they drew thread. We wove the thread and made it into cloth. Only then could we put it to use. To make a useless thing useful: that is culture. The culture of Bhārata is precisely that which is joined with saṃskāra. Saṃskāra for everything. When we come in from outside, we first wash our feet and then go into the house. Why? As we move about outside, many poisonous germs gather on our feet. We must make them clean. Many Brahmins, after the food has been served, do what they call auposana. Pouring water into the hand, they sprinkle it all round the plate.