Tradition, long conditioned thinking, can bring about a fixation, a concept that one readily accepts, perhaps not with a great deal of thought.
Interpretation
Tradition can limit our thinking and lead to uncritical acceptance of ideas.
In this quote, Jiddu Krishnamurti emphasizes that tradition and conditioned thinking can create mental fixations that hinder our ability to think independently. When we accept concepts without questioning, we risk becoming trapped in outdated beliefs, limiting our understanding and perspective on life.
In practice
During a debate on educational reform, one might reference this quote to emphasize the need for critical thinking.
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.
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Warfare is the father of all good things, it is also the father of good prose!
We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other ... except through faith.
In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds - that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the crowd broke the windows At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
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