I think Buddha would ask us to consider the karmic causes, origins, and conditions that have given rise to the kind of hatred and animosity that drove the perpetrators of this criminal act. Buddha’s vision encompassed the fact that everything in this universe has a cause, and that nothing happens by accident. This is known as the law of karma, or causation, pointing out that each and every effect has its web of myriad causes and conditions. Individuals or nations, who shortsightedly deny causality by ascribing blame to others, short-circuit the profound introspection necessary to see our own karmic responsibility for whatever befalls us and for our own lives, character and destiny--our karma, in short.

The Buddha, as an embodiment of the wisdom of spiritual experience, would exhort us to reflect and explore deeply and conscientiously about what, if anything, can be done to address the causes of those ongoing conditions, and to strive to redress the great imbalances and iniquities we find in our world as well as long for a higher, better spiritual world to come.

I suppose Buddha would note the economic, social, political, and religious differences between we Americans and those who seem to have attacked us, and observe how our own foreign policies, post-modern consumer culture and material lifestyle might contribute to arousing the spite of others with radically different world views and extreme fundamentalist religious beliefs. I think Buddha would point out that unless we get to the roots of these seemingly intractable problems, no solution is in sight.