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| Avoid doing all harm and be happy. |
The Five Precepts (guidelines for morality, virtue, human ethics, harmlessness, ahimsa) are called pañca-sīla, binding on all Buddhist laypeople. They are to abstain or refrain from:
- killing any living being
- stealing (taking what is not given)
- sexual misconduct
- false speech (that means more than lying or speaking falsehoods and includes malicious speech, harsh speech, and frivolous speech or "animal talk" mislabeled as gossip)
- the use of intoxicants (such as beer and spirits or surāmeraya).
Early Buddhist Texts nearly always condemn alcohol as do Chinese Buddhist post-canonical texts (of the Mahayana tradition).
Smoking is sometimes also included here.
In modern times, traditional Buddhist countries have seen revival movements to promote the Five Precepts, the least good karma if we hope to ever be reborn on the human plane again and avoid the subhuman planes.
In the West, the precepts play a major role in Buddhist organizations. They have also been integrated into mindfulness training programs -- though many modern "mindfulness" specialists, having changed the definition of "mindfulness" (which the Buddha called sati) to something that better suits them -- do not support this because of the precepts' spiritual religious import.
Lastly, many conflict prevention programs make use of the precepts. More
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