Discipline

Why should we follow a particular schedule?
Why should everyone conform to a particular idea.
Why does society gives accolades to people who do the same thing every day.
Control gives rise to guilt.It causes so much stress in us,to think that we have to achieve all these things...or else we are doomed.
One of the main reasons I believe discipline is stressed so much from a young age is because society itself, is a mediocre institution.To run a mediocre construct you need one leader and million followers who worship him/her.If a person sits down and analyses the model in which many of the civilizations were constructed,then there would be a new world for that person.This new world does not change the whole environment around him,but it just changes his relative position.

Jiddu Krishnamurti in his book "Think on these things" writes about discipline...

Questioner: What part does discipline play in our lives?

Krishnamurti: Unfortunately it plays a great part, does it not?A great part of your life is disciplined: do this and don t do that. You are told when to get up,what to eat and what not to eat, what you must know and not know; you are told that you must read, go to classes, pass examinations, and so on. Your parents, your teachers, your society, your tradition, your sacred books all tell you what to do; so your life is bound, hedged about by discipline, is it not? You are a prisoner of do's and don'ts, they are the bars of your cage. Now, what happens to a mind that is bound by discipline? Surely, it is only when you are afraid of something, when you are resisting something, that there has to be discipline; then you have to control, hold yourself together. Either you do this out of your own volition, or society does it for you - society being your parents, your teachers,your tradition,your sacred books.But if you begin to inquire, to search out,if you learn and understand without fear, then is discipline necessary? Then that very understanding brings about its own true order, which is not born of imposition or compulsion.

Do think about this; because when you are disciplined through fear, crushed by the compulsion of society, dominated by what your parents and teachers say, there is for you no freedom, no joy, and all initiative is gone. The older the culture, the greater is the weight of tradition which disciplines you, tells you what you must and must not do; and so you are weighed down, psychologically flattened as if a steam-roller had gone over you. That is what has happened in India. The weight of tradition is so enormous that all initiative has been destroyed, and you have ceased to be an individual; you are merely part of a social machine, and with that you are content. Do you understand? You don't revolt, explode, break away. Your parents don't want you to revolt, your teachers don't want you to break away, therefore your education is aimed at making you conform to the established pattern. Then you are not a complete human being, because fear gnaws at your heart; and as long as there is fear there is no joy, no creativity.