The Five and Eight Precepts

☸️ The Five and Eight Precepts (Pali: pañcasīla, aṭṭhaṅga-sīla)

The basic set of rules that frames a lay Buddhist’s ethics. Although sīla is often rendered as “precepts,” this list is closer to a set of “training rules” (sikkhāpada). Breaking them brings no special punishment from heaven (which cannot be said of kammic results, of course). For Buddhists these rules are decisions about their own conduct, taken voluntarily and for the sake of a particular result. The formula for undertaking a precept is: “I undertake the training rule” (sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi).

🖐 The Five Precepts - the daily baseline

Abstaining from

• killing living beings
• taking what is not given
• misconduct in sensual pleasures
• false speech
• intoxicants that lead to heedlessness

The fifth precept has an additional job: guarding the other four. Intoxication is considered dangerous precisely because it leads to pamāda - heedlessness, a loss of vigilance. The other precepts are meant to keep those who hold them from actions that carry the unfavorable consequences of unskillful behavior.

✋ The Eight - the weekend bonus level

On uposatha days (something like a “Buddhist Sabbath,” but observed by the lunar calendar - at the new moon, the full moon and the quarter moons), laypeople traditionally extend their practice to eight rules:

• The third precept tightens into complete celibacy

and the following are added:

• not eating after noon
• abstaining from entertainment, adornment, perfume and cosmetics
• not using high and luxurious beds and seats

Where the five precepts mostly restrict actions that create harm and heedlessness (pamāda), the extra rules of the eight directly cut back on sensual pleasure and comfort (but they help the practice).

The eight precepts are both a training in renunciation and a trial run of monastic life. A chance to set aside the usual entertainments and pleasures for a single day and see what is left. After all, when there is nothing in your own conduct to regret and no time spent chasing a moment’s pleasure, the mind settles more easily.

💡 In Practice

• Try keeping the five precepts. The point is not to beat yourself up over every lapse, but to use it as extra knowledge: where do we break them? Why?

The easiest place to start is noticing where we lie. What exactly does the impulse to knowingly say something untrue, distort the facts, or pass off the false as true feel like? Only once we learn to notice such urges can we really work with them.

• As an experiment, you can take one rule for a week. That gives you a chance to explore yourself in more detail: in which situations does the rule start getting in the way of your habitual autopilot? What happens in the mind then? In the body?