24

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

Hello, Web World!
Figure 1.		 Accessing register.py
Figure 2.		 Submitting register.py
Figure 3.
Xuhua Lin drew this calligraphy especially for this book. It means, loosely translated, “Python Mind, Beginner’s Mind”
Figure 4.

Example Programs

There are several example programs for chapter 24:  download chapter24.zip.  (Includes SMTP.py.)

  1. hellocgi.py
  2. register.py
  3. 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.”

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