Sri Nisargadatta on War

As I bemoan the situation in Burma to my dear friend Bob, he listens patiently and then reminds me of this, and I thought to pass it along here:

: The war is on. What is your attitude to it?

M: In some place or other, in some form or other,
the war is always on. When was there a time when
there was no war? Some say it is the will of God.
Some say it is God's play. It is another way of
saying that wars are inevitable and nobody is responsible.

Q: But what is your own attitude?

M: Why impose attitudes on me? I have no attitudes
to call my own.

Q: Surely somebody is responsible for this horrible
and senseless carnage. Why do people kill each other
so readily?

M: Search for the culprit within. The ideas of 'me'
and 'mine' are at the root of all conflict.
Be free of them and you will be out of conflict.

Q: What of it that I am out of conflict? It will not
affect the war. If I am the cause of war, I am ready
to be destroyed. Yet it stands to reason that the
disappearance of a thousand like me will not stop the wars.
They did not start with my birth and they will not end
with my death. I am not responsible, so who is?

M: Strife and struggle are a part of existence.
Why don't you inquire who is responsible for existence?

Q: Why do you say that existence and conflict are
inseparable? Can there be no existence without strife?
I need not fight others to be myself.

M: You fight others all the time for your survival as
a separate body-mind, a particular name and form.
To live you must destroy. From the moment you were
conceived you started a war with your environment -
a merciless war of mutual extermination,
until death sets you free.

Q: My question remains unanswered. You are merely
describing what I know - life and its sorrows.
But who is responsible you do not say. When I press you,
you throw the blame on God, or karma, or my own greed
and fear - which merely invites further questions.
Give me the final answer.

M: The final answer is this: nothing is.
All is a momentary appearance in the field of universal
consciousness; continuity as a name, and form as a mental
formation only, easy to dispel.

Q: I am asking about the immediate, the transitory,
the appearance. Here is a picture of a child killed
by soldiers. It is a fact - staring at you.
You cannot deny it. Now, who is responsible
for the death of the child?

M: Nobody and everybody.
The world is what it contains and each thing affects
all others. We all kill the child and we all die with it.
Every event has innumerable causes and produces
numberless effects. It is useless to keep accounts,
nothing is traceable.

Q: Your people speak of karma and retribution.

M: It is merely a gross approximation: in reality
we are all creators and creatures of each other,
causing and bearing each other's burden.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I Am That"