Morality is a Parami. Morality is also considered to be represented as three parts of the Noble Eightfold Path, Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood. We talked about Right Livelihood, and Right Action is very similar to Right Livelihood. Really it's just basically your actions not being harmful, not being involved in killing, selling ammunition, etc. It also includes things like not being involved in human trade, slaves.
Right Speech, again, not to be causing harm in our speech, but specifically we've got things like gossip and intentional lying for selfish reasons. Catch that word "intentional" and "for selfish reasons", because I always say in the regular retreat about the kids in the house and the house is burning, where the old person says, "Come out, I have some cakes and candies." But that's very rare, isn't it? Most lying is done intentionally in order to get something for "me." So that's wrong speech as well.
Morality also includes what is basically the Five Precepts I mentioned earlier: not killing, not stealing, not having sexual misconduct, not having improper speech, not having intoxicants that confuse the mind.
So Morality in Buddhism is actually looked at in a few different ways. In the meditation hall, above where Rosemary and I sit is that pretty glass window and there are Pali words. And the word in the middle, if I'm not mistaken is Sila, that's the word for Morality. So obviously whoever designed that window thought, "Hey, this is pretty important, let's put this up on the wall there."
It's also considered to be the foundation of the whole practice. When you look at the Noble Eightfold Path, the first two factors are Right Understanding and Right Intention or Thought, and that's usually called the Wisdom section. The next three, Speech and Action and Livelihood are called the Morality section. The bottom three, Effort, Mindfulness and Concentration are called the Mental Discipline section. It is often taught that you need a good basis of Morality to provide a good foundation for the Mental Discipline work. And with the Mental Discipline work you develop more Wisdom. Granted, it's not clearly separated, everything kind of works together. Like if you can imagine a spiral, one of those slinky things, you know, they're working together, it's not so linear. But it is true that a good basis of Morality provides a foundation for your whole practice. If you haven't got good Morality, you sit in the meditation and you think about your bad Kamma, it's that simple. This often causes self-pity which then creates much Dukkha. You will get in the rut of self-pity that many people wallow in. But if you've done a lot of good things, then you've got lots of happy things to think about to make you happy. And with happiness you have joy, contentment and energy, so the more you have good Morality, then the happier you're going to be.