Whatever we are doing in life, we need constraints to make things go well, rest our afflicted mind goes nuts and does not care who we harm, even ourselves. We voluntarily undertake “sweet constraints” because we have seen their purpose and the reason for them — they are good for us, they nurture the best in us and help us grow. In Buddhism, we never see our precepts as something imposed on us from outside, rather we have voluntarily chosen to take them because we realise that we need to restrain our body, speech and mind. In that way, the precepts become protective guidelines that help us to grow in a good direction and live together in good relationships with other people.

Dharma practitioners want to take precepts because we see that good rules nurture us and keep us from doing what we do not want to do anyway. Everyday habits, how we live our lives, how we treat the people around us — this is the indication of what is happening in our Dharma practice. Precepts help us from being too hedonistic, using more than our fair share, going to sensual extremes, and running around after this and that pleasure. Precepts also prevent us from going to emotional extremes where we view ourselves as saviours and others as evil enemies to be destroyed or believing our feelings are the most important in the world and we must tell them to everybody. We are moving away from samsara by taking our precepts — the lay or pratimoksha precepts, the bodhisattva precepts, and the tantric precepts — and we use them as the basis for proceeding along the path to awakening.

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