[Buddha-l] Vinaya Texts trans/ed. by Oldenberg

[JKirkpatrick]

On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:22 PM, Weng-Fai Wong wrote:

> By the way, in Chinese Buddhism (not sure if this is the case
in 
> Tibetan Buddhism), lay people are NOT to read the Vinaya. I was
told 
> that the same is true in Theravada Buddhism - till the "red
hair devils" came along.

I had an incident in my classroom about this at McGill about
fifteen years ago. A Chinese nun was horrified that I had
students reading sections of the vinaya. She said this would
disqualify students from being ordained as monks or nuns later. I
asked some Theravāda monks about this, and they said there is no
such prohibition. One Theravāda monk told me that lay people are
actually encouraged to study the vinaya. As far as I know, there
is nothing in the vinaya itself about this. If there is a taboo
against lay people being informed about the vinaya, it may be
more a "house rule" than a rule coming down from the Buddha.

Richard Hayes
=============================
Luck of the web. I had always "heard" that it was once taboo for
Roman Catholic laity to read the Bible, but apparently this is
false, according to 'All Experts--Catholicism' website: "The
first Catholic bible in English was the Douay-Rheims version
created in the late 16th century.  The current standard Bible,
the New American Bible, was commissioned by Pope Pius XII, a 20th
century Pope, 60 years ago. It was never taboo for laity to read
the Bible.  It simply was not common.  There is a historical
reason for this: for most of church history, most people,
including many priests, could not read.  Now that literacy is the
norm, the Church actively encourages people to read the Bible."
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Catholics-955/Reading-Bible.htm

This reply to a question was written by a believer, Cody, who
says that he converted from being a southern Baptist and is
studying in a Jesuit institution. 

Could "the folk" have invented this falsehood (if indeed it is
false) to save themselves from arduous scripture reading,
assuming that they were literate, of course?

JK





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