The precepts / moral discipline

The precepts (śīla, meaning moral conduct or virtue) are the basic ethical trainings of Buddhist life. For lay people—ordinary householders, not monks or nuns—the foundation is the Five Precepts, undertaken not as commandments imposed from above but as voluntary commitments one chooses to live by. They are: (1) to refrain from killing living beings; (2) to refrain from taking what is not given, that is, stealing; (3) to refrain from sexual misconduct, such as betraying a partner or harming others through sexuality; (4) to refrain from false speech, lying; and (5) to refrain from intoxicants that cloud the mind and lead to heedlessness.

It helps to notice the careful wording: these are phrased as trainings one "undertakes," not absolute laws with a divine punishment attached. The reasoning behind them is practical and compassionate—each kind of harm wounds others and also entangles the doer more deeply in suffering and unwholesome habits. Keeping the precepts is understood to make the mind calmer and clearer, which is why ethics is treated as the indispensable groundwork for meditation and wisdom; you cannot easily quiet a mind that is agitated by guilt and harmful action.

For those who go further, the codes expand. Lay people may take additional precepts on observance days; novices keep ten; and fully ordained monks and nuns live by the elaborate monastic rule of hundreds of training points. But the Five Precepts remain the shared ethical floor across virtually every Buddhist tradition—the simplest and most universal expression of the wish to live without causing harm.