By Lawrence Pintak

Karma. The law of cause and effect.

One does not need to be a Hindu, Buddhist or even believe in the concept of reincarnation to see cause and effect at work in the world today. Just turn on the TV.

"Daddy, why did those men do that?" my six-year-old daughter asked on Sept. 11, confusion clouding her innocent face.

The simple answer would have been, "They were bad men." A Tibetan lama might have replied, "Because they had karma with the victims." But as a reporter who spent years covering the Middle East, I knew another answer: "Because violence begets violence."

How will we retaliate? Who will we bomb? Before the smoke had even cleared, those questions were being repeated like mantras across the broadcast spectrum. Drowned out in the cacophony of rage were the voices that asked, "How do we end the cycle of violence?"

One need only visit the slums of the Arab world to recognize that the laws of cause and effect form the textbook for the young would-be martyrs schooled in hatred by an older generation that has endured a lifetime of despair and pain.

Those laws are etched on the faces of the Iraqi mothers who have seen their children die of disease and malnutrition and the psyches of Palestinian grandfathers who have watched generations of their offspring grow up in exile.

And they are reflected in the eyes of the men who orchestrate the reign of terror.

There could be no more graphic lesson on cause and effect than one I received in the offices of Iran’s ambassador to Syria almost two decades ago. U.S. intelligence had identified the black-robed cleric as the mastermind of the kidnappings and embassy bombings then plaguing Americans in the Middle East.

I had come to ask Khomeini’s man in Damascus why he was holding innocent hostages, including a fellow journalist. At least part of the reason was readily apparent the moment we shook hands: His was a carefully crafted rubber fake. The real hand had been blown off by a booby-trapped Koran sent to him in the wake of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. He blamed the CIA.

"Yes, it is too bad about your friend and the rest," the ambassador acknowledged, seated in the very room where some of the worst attacks on American targets had been planned. "They are suffering for the policy of your government, just as others will suffer until that policy changes."

The foot soldiers of such captains of terror can be found wherever there is despair, from North Africa to Afghanistan. They are molded by blind faith. During the Iran-Iraq War, the world heard much talk of the "keys to Paradise" which the mullahs had issued to soldiers taking part in the suicidal human wave assaults. In an Iraqi POW camp, I asked one Iranian boy-soldier if he still had his key to eternal bliss. He hesitantly nodded yes, and proudly pulled from the waistband of his prison garb what we in the West would call a "dog-tag."

Once more, the Biblical notion of an eye for an eye has come face-to-face with a distorted interpretation of the Koranic injunction to jihad, and all the People of the Book suffer.

"How do we deal with hatred and anger which are often the root causes of such senseless violence?" the Dalai Lama rhetorically asked in a letter of condolence to President Bush. "This is a very difficult question, especially when it concerns a nation and we have certain fixed conceptions of how to deal with such attacks."

Perhaps the time has come to break through those fixed conceptions. To embrace a worldview that recognizes the causes of violence and does not just dwell on the effect. That seeks punishment, yes, but along with it, justice.

Our hearts are torn. Our minds confused. Our world, the commentators keep reminding us, will never be the same again.

But must it be a world of fear and darkness?

For individuals, trauma is often the crucible of spiritual awakening. Is it possible that from this national trauma might emerge a cultural shift that will awaken our society to the endless cycle of violence and hatred in which we are trapped?

Is there a chance that we might use our vast resources to launch not just a military effort to track down the terrorists, but also an economic campaign to root out the suffering from which they were spawned?

There is a Buddhist prayer which reads in part, "May all beings be freed from suffering and the causes of suffering." Is there room for such a notion in our future relations with the Middle East? Not because we are idealistic or even compassionate, but because cause and effect dictates it is in our own defense.

One Tibetan lama I know was inconsolable in the wake of the disaster. His tears were shed for the suffering which today grips the nation -- and for the suffering yet to come.

The horror of Sept. 11 has wounded America’s psyche. But for those, like that lama, who do believe in karma and rebirth, the implications of a cycle of retribution become too terrible to even conceive.