One time the Buddha told a king, “You should be just, you should be fair, and you should be generous.” But the king forgot to be generous and so people started going hungry and they started stealing. Then the Buddha said to the king, “The point is not to start making laws against theft. The point is to look at why people are hungry.”

So that is the prompt: Look deeper. Look at all the causes and conditions. But that kind of assessment is so rarely applied in this country. – Sharon Salzberg, excerpt from Lionsroar interview