[Buddha-l] Conditioned Mind?

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:30 AM, R B Basham wrote:

>> Hayes> The gay Chinese Canadian author Wayson Choi has a notion of what
>> he calls "toxic certainty," which manifests as religious extremism,
>> fundamentalism, particularism, patriotism, racism, xenophobia,
>> homophobia and so forth. ...

> Possibly, an ancient (older than we are) 'Choy' (homophonous 'Choi' ?),
> a Canadian-born author and professor. Online biographies lack mention of
> 'gay' as well as related mentions of 'toxic certainty' though. Thanks
> for the diversion as failure to uncover certainty led me to resort to
> 'clusty.com' again (sample appended below).

Sorry about the misspelling. It is indeed Choy. I learned about his gaiety and other aspects of his personal life in his lecture on Canadian multiculturalism, which was broadcast on the CBC program Ideas. Choy talked very briefly about karma, so his lecture meets the rigid buddha-l criteria for mandatory Buddhist content. The full podcast of Choy's talk is now at http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20100705_34391.mp3 I believe those podcasts are on line for only one month before they are turned over to the US Department of Homeland Security so that all those Canadians who say positive things about Canadian health care and negative things about America's pointless and wasteful wars can be placed on the list of dangerous aliens who should be arrested at the border and waterboarded lest their ideas reach Kansas.

YAR (Yet another Richard)