Thaxter, Jason M. writes:

I've come across the use of 'Zen' in Python contexts: this is the likely origin, I would guess...

It's of more general hackish origin.

From http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/zen.html:

zen vt. To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast grok, which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. Compare hack mode. See also guru. The section on religion in appendix B of the Jargon File is also worth reading. -- A.M. Kuchling http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/ Predicting the future, as we all know, is risky. Predicting the evolution of new technology is downright hazardous. -- Leon Cooper