Krishnamurti

Is there a way to mignrate this blog to under my Google account? I'm tired of keeping a bunch of separate accounts.

At lunch I checked out www.sina.com.cn, wondering how disgusting it has become. Well, to be fair SINA shouldn't be blamed for all the disgust, such as these ads in the most eye-catching corner of the font page:

北京大学人力资源总监班
北京大学CEO总裁EMBA班
北大财务总监班今日开学
北京大学市场营销总监班
... ...
... ...

Around 1993, when I as an under, a student questioned on a seminar,

I can't see the difference between Beida and an engineering school (我看不出北大和一所技校有什么区别)!

SINA has a section with links to blogs. The name that caught my eye was 胡因梦, the link under whose name directed me to a memoir episode titled What is true love? (Of course the link on the front page of SINA has a different title, which incidentally reads Why human beings need sex? Anyway, that's the price I pay for even visiting this website.) To my suprise Hu has become a spiritual mentor; the lastest piece on her blog is her introductary foreword to a collection of Krishnamurti's talks, which reminds me that this Indian philosopher appears to be in fashion right now in China, as I saw a series of his books (or compilations of his works) on display in a bookstore in Beijing two months ago. At the sight I was somewhat amazed, because I can't imagine one reading a translated Krishnamurti. (Let's put aside the quality of the translation, in which I have no confidence whatsoever.)

More than 10 years ago there was a room in Beida's library called "Social Sciences in Foreign languages (文科外文资料室)" or something similar. It was actually a small room hosting a small, unfocused collection. I visited the room many times due not in a small part to the several rather slim books by Krishnamurti (克里希那穆提).　It was those books that let me for the first time appreciate the type of English writing that is extremly elegant and eloquent, packed with long setences of complex structures. (I'm not sure I will still find the sentences long if I read them today.) The thinking was deep, too, but the language itself was enough to keep me revisiting. A while later I deliberately avoided the shelf that held his books, for I was afraid I was reading too narrowly. I also liked a small book by the Harvard professor and John F. Kennedy's Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, who died this April.

Around the same time there was a Taiwanese book show in Beijing. After the show, the books were conveniently gifted to Beida, which dedicated a room for the books. The room, called the Collection of Hongkong and Taiwan (港台文献室), was on the 4th floor of the north side of the library. One day, a visitor showed up and was stopped by the door-keeper, because she was not a member of the University. The girl apparently had no specific target books to check out, but rather was just curious about these books from Hongkong and Taiwan. She begged literally, Can you let me take just ONE look?

The door-keeper said, No.

There was another room in the library, called the Collection for American Studies (美国研究文献资料室), also on the 4th floor. The collection was managed by a female professor seemingly in her fifties, who did research on history of women's rights movement and the like. Sometimes it was a male door-keeper who was there, and he treated (and genuinely regarded, I guess) students as if they were his subordinates. Upon entering the room, the reader would be asked to register, on a log book, his ID number, name, and department. There might be one more entry for "purpose of the visit" but I'm not sure. One day I was so pissed off by this stupid thing that I walked ahead as though the registration book did not exist. The woman professor stopped me and reminded me to register. I asked,

What are you doing this for?

We're doing a survey, like readers from what departments are interested in these books, ... she answered. And I said,

But you've been doing this survey for more than two years now.

Ah... the survey is still ongoing, ... ...

I don't remeber what else she said. I registered and got in.

Writing this I recall an ad published on magazines in the period of hightened security measures after 9/11. One high profile controversial measurement is that libraries should submit a reader's reading list at the authority's request. The full page ad is dominated by the figure of an elderly man with the help of a stick, marks of the elements on his face. The top of the page reads in striking fonts,

WE ARE NOT AMERICANS

After a suprise reading this, you'll find at another location on the page in smaller fonts, who have to read in fear. WE ARE AMERICANS who...

In my memory, managing the room with Krishnamurti's books was a very kind gentleman who had some minor problems with his legs. Occasionally a woman sat in for him, and she was nice, too. I think the gentleman retired sometime when I was still an undergrad there.

The blogger 胡因梦's introduction to Krishnamurti concludes,

读者在阅读本书时如果能放空既往的成见和认知，可能更容易和克氏的言语相应。若是能合一相应，你将会发现意识活动所形成的甲胄，在克氏无情的洞见之下一层一层地被卸除，而无染的本觉就这么自自然然地显现了。

What a pile.