(WQ) The Five Precepts, like the later Yamas (from the subsequently formulated "limbs" of Raja Yoga attributed to Patanjali), are stated as restraints:
- Abstain from taking life or encouraging killing
- Abstain from taking what is not given or encouraging stealing
- Abstain from sexual misconduct or encouraging misconduct
- Abstain from false speech or encouraging deception
- Abstain from intoxicants or encouraging intoxication
Interestingly, the lowest form of keeping these is also the highest -- to this extent: Celibacy, for example, is both the minimum and maximum way to practice the third precept. The least one would be wise to do, if one is not going to behave properly with regard to sensual matters, is maintain complete continence or celibacy. After that, one may engage in good conduct regarding sensual matters.
Avoiding harm to others AND oneself (not one or the other but both), one engages in sex for example with consideration, kindness, and compassion. One engages when it is consensual, mutually beneficial, and agreed on. One's attitude is that all partners enjoy or benefit from the experience. For instance, Eckhart Tolle is not celibate but rather has a partner in Kim Eng; moreover, stream-enterers and once-returners frequently live sensual lives in the world after their attainment (even if they abstained to arrive at their liberating realization).
Conversely, the highest way to practice "abstaining from sexual misconduct" is celibacy: brahmacarya, which means the "vehicle (or means, acarya)-to-the-Brahma-worlds" that is practiced by non-returners (who will not return to this world but be reborn in the Pure Abodes), monastics and eight-precept-holders who are striving toward immediate fruition and enlightenment, and arahants.
Likewise, the lowest way to practice the fourth precept is noble silence. Bite your tongue. "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all" is the popular Western adage. The Eastern version is, "Don't speak unless you can improve on silence." If one must engage in "false speech," it is better to remain silent. That is the least one can do. It is far better to speak what is "true," that is, to speak what is:
- timely
- honest
- gentle
- spoken with a good motive
- spoken with a loving heart
Conversely, silence is also the highest. For when one sees and touches nirvana, what is there to say? This is it, the incomparable, the dissolving of all formations, the laying down of the burden, done is what was to be done, now there is no more coming to be (of suffering, rebirth, or samsara). One might, to be poetic, exclaim Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha!* But it's not necessary. The Therigatha and Theragatha ("Elders' Verses") are the recorded utterances of what ancient nuns and monks at the time of the Buddha did in fact say when they attained enlightenment.
*My translation of this classic Sanskrit mantra (Heart Sutra) runs: "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, oh what an awakening, so it is!"
