Granite Day, 8th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Blood on the streets of downtown Caracas, blood on the streets of Minneapolis. Her name was Renee Nicole Good, but does anyone know the names of the estimated 80 persons killed by U.S. troops in the raid to capture Maduro? 

And now for your moment of Zen:

Nanyuan was once asked by a monk, “On top of this lump of red flesh sits a sheer cliff of a thousand feet. Isn’t this what you said?”

Nanyuan said, “It is.”

The monk then lifted and turned over the meditation bench.

Nanyuan exclaimed, “Look how this blind ass acts!”

The monk started to speak.

Nanyuan hit him.

The sheer, thousand-foot cliff represents the barrier to our understanding. Nanyuan says it's on top of us because it is us - it's the barrier of our mind trying to grasp the ungraspable.

The monk thought he had come up with a clever means of direct action to show his teacher an understanding that went beyond words and ideas, but the teacher saw that the premeditated action was just another idea, not a spontaneous expression. He calls out the monk with an insult and when the monk begins to spontaneously respond with words (language), Nanyuan strikes him (direct action) to show him he's on the wrong track. Besides, almost all the Nanyuan koans end with, "he hit him." Zen masters back then often behaved more like Moe Howard than Gandhi.

Although it does not appear in the Blue Cliff Record, the Book of Serenity, or the Gateless Gate, Zen Master Dogen including this story in his anthology of 300 koans. However, Dogen does not discuss or quote this story in any of his other writings. It has been translated into English by Andy Ferguson (in Zen's Chinese Ancestors) and John Daido Loori includes it in The True Dharma Eye.