What is "virtue" (sila), and who cares?

Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Terms, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

I'm Sila. That's how much I love it and see sila as most important in the world (TurkeyPurge).

What is the point of being virtuous or moral? It is not an end in itself, although it does provide for a peaceful abiding in the world. But there is a better reason for it -- to gain unification of mind, which is the essential support (condition) for the arising of liberating insight and transcendent wisdom. Only two people should care -- those wishing to avoid the exponentially painful results of unskillful karma and those aiming for enlightenment and nirvana (awakening from this illusion and ultimate bliss).

What is "virtue"?

In Buddhism sila means "virtue" or "ethical and moral conduct. It is a mode of mind and volition (intention, cetana) manifested in speech and bodily action (karma).

It is the FOUNDATION of the whole Buddhist practice and the first of the three kinds of training (sikkhā) that form the 3-fold division of the Ennobling Eightfold Path (magga): virtue (morality), concentration  (unification of mind), and wisdom (insight).

Buddhist morality is not, as it may appear from the negative formulations in the sutras, something negative. For it does not consist merely of refraining from unskillful, unwholesome actions.

Rather, in each instance the clearly conscious and intentional restraint from the bad actions corresponds to a simultaneously arising wholesome volition.

Virtue in the Ennobling Eightfold Path -- namely, right speech, right action, and right livelihood -- is called "genuine or natural morality" (pakatisīla).

This is distinguished from the external rules for monastics and lay Buddhists, the so called "prescribed morality" (paññatti-sīla), which, as such, is karmically neutral.

For sila being a Benedictine may be enough.

The Buddha taught, "What now is karmically wholesome virtue (kusala sīla)? It is the wholesome bodily action (kāya karma), wholesome verbal action (vacī karma), and also purity with regard to livelihood that I call morality" (MN 78). Compare to the path (magga, 3-5).

For the Five-, Eight-, and Ten-Precept rules, see sikkhāpada. Furthermore, compare with cāritta-sīla and vāritta-sīla.

The four kinds of morality consisting of purification (catupārisuddhi-sīla) are:

1. restraint with regard to the monks' Disciplinary Code,
2. restraint of the senses,
3. purification of livelihood,
4. morality with regard to the Four Requisites (of a monastic).

Buddhist nuns study the Vinaya, Shravasti, India

(1) Restraint with regard to the Monastic Disciplinary Code (pātimokkha-samvara-sīla). "Here the monastic is restrained in accordance with the Monastic Disciplinary Code, is perfect in conduct and behavior, and perceives danger even in the least offences (slightest faults), one trains oneself in the rules one has undertaken" (A . V, 87,109 ,114, etc.)

(2) Restraint of the senses (indriya-samvara-sīla). "Whenever the monastic perceives a form with the eye, a sound with the ear, a fragrance with the nose, a flavor with the tongue, an impression with the body, an object with the mind, one neither adheres to the appearance as a whole nor to its parts.

"And one strives to ward off that through which unskillful and unwholesome things, greed and remorse, would arise, if one were to remain with senses unguarded. And one watches over the senses, restrains the senses" (MN 38).

(3) Purification of livelihood (ājīva-pārisuddhi-sīla). It consists therein of the monastic not acquiring a livelihood in a way unbefitting of a monastic. [How this would be accomplished is spelled out in great detail.]

(4) Virtue with regard to the Four Requisites (paccaya-sannissita-sīla) consists of a monastic being guided by the right mental attitude when making use of the Four Requisites: robes, alms food, dwelling, and medicine.

• "Wisely reflecting (yoniso manasikara) one makes use of robes...merely to protect oneself against cold and heat....
• Wisely reflecting one makes use of alms food... merely as a prop and support to this body.... 
• Wisely reflecting one makes use of a dwelling... merely to keep off the dangers of weather and to enjoy mental withdrawal from the world....
• Wisely reflecting one makes use of the necessary medicines merely to suppress feelings of sickness that arise and to reach perfect freedom from suffering" (cf. MN 2).

About these four kinds of morality, The Path of Purification (Vis.M. I) gives a detailed exposition. More