Brad Warner insists “Zen cannot be taught via the Internet or on a blog.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I don’t keep this blog as a way of teaching Zen. Zen cannot be taught via the Internet or on a blog. Same as you couldn’t teach someone how to play basketball via the Internet or on a blog.

Sure you could teach a lot about basketball via the Internet, its history, its major players, statistics, descriptions of playing techniques. You could even put up some helpful videos or give advice to people who emailed questions. But you couldn’t really teach basketball that way. You would need to be face-to-face in the same gymnasium. No two ways about it.

Not a Zen practitioner myself, I have no honest opinion on the Zen-to-basketball comparison. But I would say it applies to the Theravada—if you’ve never place rice in a monk’s bowl before, you might want to add a new line to your spiritual checklist.