
Chapter 24
Miscellany
This dog just ran a thousand miles.
—Lynda Plettner, musher, talking about her lead dog
RG, at the end of the 1999 Iditarod
Right Practice
Zazen practice is the direct expression
of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is
no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than
this way of life.
—Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Right Attitude
When you become you, Zen becomes Zen.
When you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your
surroundings.
—Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Right Understanding
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but
concentration on our usual everyday routine.
—Shunryu Suzuki,
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Our understanding of Buddhism is not just an intellectual
understanding. True understanding is actual practice itself.
—Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Summary
The practice of Zen mind is beginner’s mind.
The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen
practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of
the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.
It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by
step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.
This practice of Zen mind is found throughout the book. Directly
or sometimes by inference, every section of the book concerns the question
of how to maintain this attitude through your meditation and in your life.
This is an ancient way of teaching, using the simplest language and the
situations of everyday life. This means the student should teach
himself.
—Richard Baker, Introduction to Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Figures
Example Programs
There are several example programs for chapter 24: download chapter24.zip. (Includes SMTP.py.)
- hellocgi.py
- register.py
- SMTP.py
Exercises
Obtain Vladimir Ulogov’s SMTP module which can be found at http://starship.python.net/crew/gandalf/SMTP.py.
The documentation for the Python debugger, pdb, can be found
at http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-pdb.html.
To learn more about HTML, see HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 5th Editiion, by Chuck Musciano and Bill
Kennedy, from O’Reilly.
Also useful is Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, by Danny Goodman, also from O’Reilly, 2nd Edition.
A massive compendium of excellent debugging techniques is Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
by
Steve C McConnell. Microsoft Press, 2nd Edition.
For some more of my views on eating strawberries (if you’re not completely
sick of them already), visit Revenge of the Bean Counters.
Actually, I don’t care for strawberries, but it sounds better to say “strawberry”
than “tuna steak.”