In plain words
If you eat sweets with asafoetida and dry ginger in your mouth, will you know their sweetness?! The cause of bad thoughts arising in you is nothing but faulty food!
Students must read only the lives of great souls and the books that awaken good intentions
Girl and boy students! All of you must follow the good path. Whatever you eat, just that smell rises up in you. Our whole life depends on the food we eat. If your parents themselves serve you rājasic and tāmasic food, you must counsel them: ‘Mother! If you give me such food, how will good thoughts come to me rather than bad ones? If you eat a lemon and want the taste of an apple, will it come?’ Telling them in this way, you must teach your parents too to eat sāttvic food. Not only that. Even when you read, you must read only good books. Do not read silly books. When you go to the library, you must read only the lives of great souls and the books that awaken good intentions. But students today are not reading good books. From reading impure books, nothing but impure thoughts come. In ancient times great souls were able to nourish good intentions through sādhana and through good company. If you read bad books instead of the lives of such great souls, you too will surely turn bad. Our mind itself is the cause of good and bad. ‘For men, the mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation,’ it has been said. In this Kali age, only bad books carry great value! Many people write impure stories for money and spoil the minds of children. Children today regard reading bad books as a ‘fashion’. Many children, when they go by train or by bus, ‘select’ just such books first. ‘Is this good for me? Or not?’ they do not ask. If, after reading bad books and being ruined, you then try to read good books, what use is it?