...In keeping with the Buddha's description of his transforming insight into interdependence as like coming across a "long lost city, overgrown by dense jungle,"(4) ignorance, habit formations, and craving desires can be seen as the root, trunk, and fruit of dukkha.

In a Buddhist sense, ignorance is closely linked with the so-called conceit that "I am"?the conceit that we are each independently existing beings. The English word existence derives from Latin roots meaning to "stand apart from" and neatly captures the arrogance inherent to claims of independence. We can consistently imagine ourselves to exist in a literal sense as fully autonomous individuals only through ignoring our common ground. By excluding the middle between what I am and what I am-not, it is possible to experience my separateness from others as a "natural" fact. However, insofar as trouble or suffering arises through particular patterns of interdependent relationships, it is also to ignore the sources or origin of trouble or suffering. In short, it is to render ourselves vulnerable. To the extent that we experience ourselves as existing in this literal sense, trouble will always seem to take us by surprise.

The logic of responding to violence with violence has much in common with that of fighting fire with fire. It is possible, for example, to stop a forest fire from spreading by carrying out a controlled burning of all vegetation at some encircling remove from the outer perimeter of the forest fire. If this controlled burn is executed in a thorough and timely fashion, when the outer perimeter of the forest fire reaches this encircling band of already burned terrain, there will be no further fuel for it to consume. The forest fire is effectively forced to simply burn itself out. Likewise, ending violence through violence is feasible so long as the original source of violence can be effectively identified and isolated, and if a controlled "burn" can be executed?that is, if the source of violence can be prevented from drawing in new "fuel" or recruits, arms, and weapons.

Problems with this strategy become immediately apparent as soon as the condition in question?whether fire or violence?can no longer be effectively contained. If there are too many individual fires raging, perimeter burns simply hasten the speed with which the middle ground between blazes is consumed, spawning ever-larger scale fires in a combustive avalanche. At a certain point, fighting fire with fire would result in planetary conflagration. If we are not yet at precisely this point in the war on terrorism, its possibility has at least become undeniable.

The karma of control can be verbally expressed by something like the following: the better we get at controlling our circumstances, the more we find ourselves in situations both open to and in need of control. Continued appeal to control as a means of managing our experience and circumstances leads to their factual transformation in ways that are anything but trivial. The more completely we are able to exert control?that is, to get what we want, pretty much as and when we want it?the more highly controlled (and in need of control) our circumstances must be. However, the most highly controlled environment is not a paradise. It is a high-security prison. The kind of freedom implied by the exercise of control is thus self-defeating.(12)