violence is a state of mind, an expression of ignorance

We are not innocent children victimized by a big, bad world; if our world is big and bad we made it that way. This is what the Buddha taught. The "other" is a child's boogeyman, the projection of our own fears onto a terrifying object of our imagination, which in turn terrorizes us. Our ignorance is not seeing that we are the other. We cannot afford to confuse innocence with this ignorance. Violence is not a permanent, immutable, fixed object. It is a state of mind, an expression of ignorance, with no more solid substance than a cloud. We cannot make a frontal attack on violence. Even protecting ourselves from it fuels its boogeyman existence. But the Buddha taught that we can change. This was his good news: that there is a way to alleviate suffering by freeing our minds from geed, anger, and ignorance. Yet until we apprehend the ways in which we are Oklahoma City, the bombs and the baby bears, the victims and the violators, we will continue to blame "the," all the while proclaiming our innocence and evading our responsibilities.

~ Helen Tworkov, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review