The five precepts are the five areas of renunciation for householders – for us.

The monks have hundreds of practices of renunciation, but the Buddha said, “for you guys, just five. I'm going to keep it really simple. Not a high level of renunciation. Just five areas of your life to practice some disciplines and abstinence and renunciation.”

The precepts are all framed on abstaining from actions that create negative karma for us.

If you remember, the first factor of the eightfold path the Buddha says, “here's the path to awakening, and the first thing you have to understand is the truth of karma.”

We have to know that ‘cause and effect’ are reality. It's not an idea. It's not a philosophy. It's not a perspective or opinion. It is a truth that we are living and breathing; that we are totally responsible for all of our volitional actions – meaning intentional / on purpose – all of our volitional actions have a consequence, have an outcome, have what we call a, ‘karmic fruit’.

All of the ones that are classified as ‘negative or unwholesome’ create negative karma for us: a momentum towards suffering, towards unhappiness.

And all of the positive, ‘wholesome’, this is simply classified as kindness, generosity, love, compassion, forgiveness and friendliness – All the positive – do more of that; more kindness, more compassion, more generosity, more positive karma in our lives, more service, more patience with annoying people or annoyingly difficult situations. All of that creating karmic momentum in the direction we want to go.

All of the judgments, anger, violence, dishonesty cause negative karma for us.

So the Buddha says, “If you want to get free from the causes of suffering, here's five ways that we cause suffering to ourselves and others;

The first is to abstain from murder.

The second two are about honesty; abstain from lying and abstain from stealing.

The next precept is about sex, and the translation says one avoids unlawful sexual intercourse.

The fifth is abstaining from drugs and alcohol: being sober.”

The five precepts are referred to as ‘Sila’; Buddhist ethics to train ourselves to abstain from killing, lying, stealing, sexual misconduct and using intoxicants.

Now you don't have to be perfect.

But you can try. It's worth the effort to try to be careful with our speech, with our actions, with our sexuality.