What are the Five Precepts?

By Tim Yu · Updated 2026-06-04

The Five Precepts (Pāli pañca-sīla) are the five basic training rules of Buddhist lay ethics, undertaken voluntarily: to refrain from (1) killing or harming living beings, (2) taking what is not given (stealing), (3) sexual misconduct, (4) false speech (lying), and (5) intoxicants that cause heedlessness. They are commitments to train the mind, not commandments.

The short answer

The Five Precepts are training rules (Pāli sikkhāpada), not commandments. Lay Buddhists take them on voluntarily — the traditional formula is “I undertake the training rule to refrain from…” — as a foundation for ethical conduct and mental training, rather than as orders handed down by a god or imposed by an authority. They describe a way of living to be practised, not a law to be obeyed.

In more depth

The five, with their canonical source

The Abhisanda Sutta (AN 8.39), translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu for Access to Insight, sets out all five as “gifts” a person gives to “limitless numbers of beings” simply by abstaining. In the recitation form most often heard today (the veramaṇī formula, given here in Access to Insight’s edition), the five are:

1. Refrain from killing — Pāṇātipātā veramaṇī: “I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures.” (AN 8.39: “abandoning the taking of life, [one] abstains from taking life.”)
2. Refrain from stealing — Adinnādānā veramaṇī: “I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.” (AN 8.39: “abandoning taking what is not given… abstains from taking what is not given.”)
3. Refrain from sexual misconduct — Kāmesu micchācārā veramaṇī: “I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.” (AN 8.39: “abandoning illicit sex… abstains from illicit sex.”)
4. Refrain from false speech — Musāvādā veramaṇī: “I undertake the precept to refrain from incorrect speech.” (AN 8.39: “abandoning lying… abstains from lying.”)
5. Refrain from intoxicants — Surāmeraya-majja-pamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī: “I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.” (AN 8.39: “abandoning the use of intoxicants… abstains from taking intoxicants.”)

The Pāli root text of AN 8.39 on SuttaCentral lists the same five using the pahāya … paṭivirato hoti (“abandoning … abstains”) wording — for example “pāṇātipātaṁ pahāya pāṇātipātā paṭivirato hoti” — which is the canonical phrasing; the shorter veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṁ samādiyāmi (“I undertake the training rule to refrain from…”) wording above is the standard recitation form preserved in the liturgy.

Training rules, not commandments

This framing matters. The translator Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu observes that “Sometimes, when referring to the precepts, the Buddha would replace the word sīla with sikkhāpada, which literally means ‘training rule’” (Good Heart, Good Mind, dhammatalks.org). The precepts are something a person voluntarily undertakes — expressed in the first person, “I undertake…” — rather than a decree issued from outside. The wider category is sīla, which Encyclopædia Britannica defines as “morality, or right conduct”, one part of the threefold training alongside meditation and wisdom; on the path it covers right speech, right action and right livelihood (see the Noble Eightfold Path).

Across traditions

The Five Precepts are the shared baseline of lay Buddhist ethics. Encyclopædia Britannica calls them the precepts “normally observed by all Buddhists — not to kill, steal, lie, take intoxicants, or commit sexual offenses”, and notes that laypeople “are to observe the first five precepts (pañca-sīla) at all times”. The same five appear in Mahāyāna lay practice under the Sanskrit name pañcaśīla. The third precept (sexual misconduct) and the fifth (intoxicants) are the ones whose exact scope is read differently by different teachers and communities — from avoiding intoxication to complete abstinence in the fifth, for instance — so it is more accurate to speak of a shared core with some interpretive variation than of a single fixed rulebook.

On certain observance (uposatha) days, more committed lay practitioners may take a longer set of eight precepts rather than five. According to Britannica, these “include the five precepts normally observed by all Buddhists … as well as injunctions against eating food after noon, attending entertainments or wearing bodily adornments, and sleeping on a luxurious bed”. The eight (and the monastic ten) are an intensification of the same ethic, not a replacement for the five.