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First a few definitions. By “principle” is meant, in this connection, (a) “a fundamental truth; a comprehensive law or doctrine, from which others are derived, or on which others are founded,” and (b) “a settled rule of action; a governing law of conduct; an opinion, attitude, or belief which exercises a directing influence on the life and behaviour; a rule (usually a right rule) of conduct consistently directing one’s actions.” From this it is evident that the English word “principle” (deriving ultimately from the Latin principium, princeps) has much in common with the Sanskrit word dharma (= Pali dhamma, Chinese fa, Tibetan chos). The Dharma taught by the Buddha, and to which as the second of The Three Jewels we go for Refuge, represents not only the fundamental truth or reality of things, as revealed in the Enlightened consciousness of the Buddha, but also that truth or reality as communicated to mankind in the form of a comprehensive law or doctrine from which there proceeds a governing law of conduct that exercises a directing influence on the life and behaviour of the individual “dharmacari(ni)”, i.e. the one who “courses” (carati) in the Dharma-as-truth and the Dharma-as-righteousness. Thus the terms principle and dharma have a double significance, a significance that relates to both thought and action, theory and practice. Ethics is generally defined as “the science and moral duty” or, more broadly, as “the science of the ideal human character and the ideal ends of human action”. For the purpose of this discussion, it could be defined as that branch of knowledge which is concerned with human behaviour insofar as that behaviour is considered with regard to notions of right and wrong.
The expression “the Ten Precepts” is, of course, English, and I have been using it as the equivalent of a number of different terms in Sanskrit and Pali. What we call the Ten Precepts is referred to, in the canonical sources, as the ten silas (a term which is applied, as we shall see later on, to more than one set of precepts), as the ten siksapadas, as the ten kusala-karma-pathas, and so on. (It must be emphasised that although the terms for them vary, the number of items comprised in the set remains unchanged, as does the actual content of each item.) Indeed, as we saw when referring to the fifty suttas of the Anguttara-Nikaya which are canonical sources of the Ten Precepts, what we call the Ten Precepts are in fact known by a wide variety of designations, their actual content however always remaining the same. Perhaps the best known term for the Ten Precepts is that which speaks of them as consisting of abstention from the ten akusala-dharmas, as they are called, and in the observance, practice, or cultivation of the ten kusala-dharmas.
“Kusala” is a very important term. In its broader significance it means clever, skillful, or expert in the sense of knowing how to act in a way that is beneficial rather than otherwise. Kusala-karma or skillful action thus is action which is directed towards securing, both for oneself and others, the best possible results in terms of happiness, knowledge, and freedom, i.e. it is action which is constantly mindful of the law of karma, as well as of the painful, impermanent, and insubstantial nature of conditioned existence, and of the blissful, permanent and “empty” nature of the Unconditioned. Kusala thus is an ethical term, since it is a term which is applied, in the words of our definition of ethics, to “human behaviour insofar as that behaviour is considered with regard to the notions of right and wrong.” Nor is that all. The term kusala is not applied to human behaviour considered with regard to notions of right or wrong in any merely abstract or “comparative” sense. It is applied to it as considered with regard to a very definite and specific notion which the term kusala itself implies, and which it even embodies, i.e. the notion that “right” is what conduces to the attainment of Enlightenment and “wrong” what does not. The meaning of “ethics” and the meaning of “kusala” therefore coincide. Kusala is not simply an ethical term. Kusala is itself the ethical.
But we can go further than that. The topic with which we are at present concerned is “The Ten Precepts as Principles of Ethics”. We have seen that the best known term for the Ten Precepts is the ten kusala-dharmas. We have also seen that the word “principle” has much in common with the word “dharma”, even to the extent of their sharing the double connotation of relating to both thinking and doing, the theoretical and the practical, and that the word kusala coincides in meaning with “ethical” and even with “ethics”. Such being the case it should be clear, without further explanation, that what the Ten Precepts really represent are principles of ethics, or ethical principles. They are not rules, in the narrow, pettifogging sense of the term. They are not directly concerned with the minutiae of conduct, though they of course may be concerned with them indirectly.
The fact that, as we have seen, the observance of the Precepts represents the prolongation of the act of Going for Refuge into every aspect of one’s existence, i.e. represents the total transformation of the individual who Goes for Refuge in accordance with the Ideal which the Going for Refuge implies, means that one’s behaviour comes to be increasingly governed by ten great ethical principles, the principles of non-violence or love, of non-appropriation or generosity, and so on. Thus the Ten Precepts are not rules, though rules may be founded on them, or derived from them. If we could think of the Precepts as being what in fact they are, ethical principles in accordance with which, as a result of our commitment to the Ideal of Enlightenment, we are doing our best to live, a good deal of confusion would be avoided. We would also find the Precepts themselves more inspiring.
Though the Precepts are most decidedly principles and not rules, yet rules in the sense of rules of training may, as I have said, be founded on them or derived from them. Moreover, both as principles and as rules the Precepts may be transmitted, within the appropriate ceremonial context, from teacher to disciple. To the topic of the Ten Precepts as Rules of Training we must now therefore turn.