From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how ignorance of our ingrained beliefs and societal influences leads to conflict and suffering.
Jiddu Krishnamurti's quote delves into the idea that many of our conflicts arise from unexamined prejudices and traditions that we blindly adhere to. He suggests that we often remain unaware of how these beliefs enslave us, binding our perceptions and behaviors to societal norms and false values, which ultimately results in a cycle of transient joys followed by suffering.
In practice
In a discussion about societal norms, this quote can be used to encourage critical thinking about inherited beliefs.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
Philosophy takes as her aim the state of happiness...she shows us what are real and what are only apparent evils. She strips men's minds of empty thinking, bestows a greatness that is solid and administers a check to greatness where it is puffed up and all an empty show; she sees that we are left no doubt about the difference between what is great and what is bloated.
I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.
In America, a black man has to feel like he's God just to make it a little bit when white people can just feel human. They can just be themselves, but for me, I feel we have to start instilling that back into our people. That pride. That black power. That privilege to be alive.
This afternoon held that special quality of mournful emptiness I've connected with late Sunday afternoons ever since childhood: the feeling of having nothing to do.
I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.
Don't let the wicked city get you down.
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