The Five Precepts are designed to discipline and purify the three avenues ofhuman action – body, speech, and mind. Abstention from killing, stealing, andsexual misconduct disciplines bodily action.

                  Abstention from false speech disciplines verbal action. It is also expected under this fourth precept that oneshould refrain from slander,abusive speech and frivolous talk. The dual disciplineof body and speech has a salutary effect on the purity of mind, though completemental purity can be brought about effectively only through bhåvanå, mentalculture or meditation.The fifth precept against the use of intoxicants attempts tosafeguard the mental faculty from degenerating through a bad habit.

                   A man underthe influence of intoxicants has no control over himself, and thus is easily temptedto transgress the four other precepts as well.Traditionally, the Five Precepts are regarded as part and parcel of personalmorality, a stepping stone along the path to liberation.

                  However, these FivePrecepts also have a momentous relevance tomodern society. Man in the modernworld lives in a critical state of illness – an illness rooted in moral negligence.

                  Thefive rules of training which form the backbone of Buddhist ethics offer a remedyfor that illness, a course of therapy that is radical because it strikes at the root ofthe problem. This I hope to show by an examination of each of the precepts