[xavriley]

Thank you for posting this. I feel like it gives a better context. My interpretation is that the focus is on monks (as opposed to lay people) in that they might be preaching about their virtues while continuing to have vices and earthly desires. This makes sense in a religion in that you’d want your monks to strive for something like “ideal” behaviour (even if it’s not reachable) otherwise what is the point of a monk?

Stating it as a list of facts (as in the OP) seems akin to literal interpretations of the bible where the world was created 4000 years ago etc. A more reasonable view would be to take the message in context. I don’t think Buddha had anything against laypeople playing chess

[kragen]

Yes, the vinaya was for monks; precepts for laypeople were a later addition. I think to a great extent, though, he's not talking about good Buddhist monks vs. bad Buddhist monks; he's talking about what distinguishes the Buddhist path from the paths followed by other "contemplatives". If you look a couple pages back from that quote, you'll see that the sutta is contrasting him with various other "contemplatives" — today we'd call them Hindu sadhus, but "Hindu" didn't become a religious identity until some 2000 years later.

As for the question of whether everybody should become a monk, well, certainly the Mahayanist Bodhisattva Vow claims so — if not in this lifetime, in some future lifetime. But the authenticity of the Mahayana sutras is sufficiently divisive that it created a schism in Buddhism that continues today, 2000 years later.

I think there are a couple of interesting facts we can get from the list of games:

1. Either Shakyamuni thought playing games like these amounted to "having vices" incompatible with striving diligently at meditation, or the Buddhist sangha thought he thought that within a few centuries of his death. Perhaps even more surprising, he thought the same thing about going to concerts and using mirrors.

2. Holy shit, people have been playing pick-up sticks and guessing letters drawn in the air for 2500 years?