Traditions and Values

Posted
17 वर्ष ago
शेवटचा प्रतिसाद
16 वर्ष ago

He was a proud man, with that peculiar pride, not of achievement, not the pride of the well-born or of the rich, but the pride of an ancient race, of the representative of an ancient tradition and system of thought and morality which, actually, had nothing whatever to do with what he really was.
-J Krishnamurti, in The only revolution

Jiddu Krishnamurti was brought up as a prophet but he gave up the position thus created for him and became a freelance philosopher and a very good one. Much of his teachings are agreeable almost to their last part where he, magically, and unfortunately like most other spiritual leaders, connects it all to something supernatural making a mess of it.

He was very perceptive and understood the human condition and predicament very well. In his book The Only Revolution he takes up case studies of his visitors, their thoughts, intentions and questions. It is about one such person that the quote above appears. One can immediately envisage such a person. Though this happened in India, there are many civilizations around the globe which harbor such people. India is likely to have the most because our tradition IS ancient, and because we love harping on it, often at the expense of the current and future and irrespective of our worth in the scheme of things, exactly as stated here.

Rather than being content on what our ancestors did under the prevalent models and conditions, we need to reexamine all traditions and values and keep only those which are still relevant. Then we can afford to be proud of those. It will be even better if we add to the past developments. Many of us are already doing that. In the least we should recognize their contribution in helping make India modern - not necessarily in the sense of making it Western which many seem to loathe, but just making it so that the latest technology can be used by all and the minimum needs for most can be satisfied in a straightforward manner. A healthy skepticism combined with a faith in the bold ways of the current generation will go a long way in doing that.

Rather than just being proud of whence we came, we should try to make our ancestors proud of being our ancestors. That is unlikely to be achieved by blindly trying to imitate them.

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