Is loving humanity part of zen?

Compassion can spring from enlightenment and the awareness of the face you had before you were born. Agreed.

However, zen is well known to have had a fierce, aggressive, sometimes violent aspect from the very start. That, rather than compassion is its distinctive mark.

And that is why Rayanne is more zen as Hit Girl on The Recruiting Animal Show than in her other radio appearances.

Here are some zen stories that illustrate what I mean.

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http://www.renegadezen.com/zen-stories/guteis-finger

Gutei’s finger

Whenever anyone asked him about Zen, the great master Gutei would quietly raise one finger into the air.

A boy in the village began to imitate this behavior. Whenever he heard people talking about Gutei’s teachings, he would interrupt the discussion and raise his finger.

Gutei heard about the boy’s mischief. When he saw him in the street, he seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and began to run off, but Gutei called out to him.

When the boy turned to look, Gutei raised his finger into the air. At that moment the boy became enlightened.

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http://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/eng/stories/book2.html

On the ninth day of December a monk-in-training called Shen-kuang(Shinko, in Japanese) came looking for Bodhidharma [who came from India to China and was the founder of zen].

A deep snow had covered the mountains and Shen-kuang had to break a trail through the snow as he tried to follow the path, but finally he arrived at Bodhidharma’s wall. The winter night on the high mountain peak was so cold that even the joints of the bamboo cracked, and it seemed impossible to stand outdoors, but Bodhidharma did not even turn around to look.

Shen-kuang stood stock-still throughout the night without sleeping, sitting, or resting. The falling snow drifted up to his waist; his tears froze into beads of ice; and his robes froze to his body so that he became like a block of ice. His whole body was rigid with cold, but the mind which seeks the Way was burning brightly.

Finally, as the night was turning to dawn, Bodhidharma turned and asked, “You’ve been standing in the snow a long time. What is it you’re looking for?”

“I have a request. Please have mercy on me and show me the true Buddhist teachings!”

But Bodhidharma’s answer to Shen-kuang’s tearfully earnest entreaty was colder than ice. “One seeks the Buddha’s teaching at the risk of one’s life. It is a waste of time for an ignorant person of little virtue to carelessly and conceitedly seek the teachings of the Buddha.”

Hearing this, Shen-kuang made his resolve even firmer. Taking a sharp sword he cut off his left arm at the elbow and presented the severed arm to Bodhidharma.

Bodhidharma realized that this very Shen-kuang was a person worthy of succeeding to the teachings and allowed him to be a disciple.

In this manner, Bodhidharma became the first patriarch of Chinese Zen, and Shen-kuang (later known as Huike, or Eka in Japanese) became the second.

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Bodhidharma is said to have fallen asleep seven years into his nine years of wall-gazing. Becoming angry with himself, he cut off his eyelids to prevent it from happening again.

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Throughout Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is depicted as a rather
ill-tempered, profusely bearded and wide-eyed barbarian. He is described as “The Blue-Eyed Barbarian” in Chinese texts.
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http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/zen.asp

In Tokyo there are some Zen monasteries as well. In one of these monasteries … there was a Zen monk who happened to be very conceited. He refused to listen to whatever the master was trying to tell him and used the early morning interviews with the master to air all his pet theories. The masters have a special stick for this type of pupil. Our master has one, too, you will have seen it, a short thick stick. One morning the master hit the monk so hard that the monk didn’t get up any more. He couldn’t, because he was dead….

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