Morality has two basic levels: One is social morality, and the other is a deeper one. Social morality is to follow the laws of wherever you live. Now, they are often very different to laws of another country. Germany here in the middle of summer if it gets too hot, what can people do? They can strip naked in the park, right? I don't know if that's in all of Germany, but in certain parks you can strip naked, relax and cool off.
Try doing that in Malaysia. NO! You can't do it. So, that's a social morality law. In Malaysia, though, they can have four wives. Men can have four wives, only if you can afford them, okay, you have to actually prove you can afford them, it's a little stronger there. You can have four wives there and that's social morality, but here you can't. So social morality is one level and depending on where we live it's important to follow that level otherwise, of course, we are punished or go to jail and so on.
But there is a deeper level that we want to develop and that's centered around the compassionate intention of not wishing to cause harm. Not wishing to create problems for ourselves and not wishing to create problems for others.
Buddhism talks about The Five Precepts . The Five Precepts are not to kill intentionally, not to steal intentionally, not to have sexual misconduct intentionally, not to use false speech intentionally and not to have alcohol and drugs, anything that confuses your mind, intentionally. Now, you notice that I said the word "intentionally" at the end of each one of them.
This is a little different to the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments, which says, "Thou shall not." Buddhism says, "Don't intentionally do it." If you do it unintentionally, it is not against the code. People usually do these things intentionally. But Buddhism have this fine line here because this excuses little kids who are doing something wrong because all the other kids are telling them, "Let's go, do it!". A little kid really has no intention. My intention as a little kid killing ants was the fact that my parents told me, "Kill every little critter in the house". I thought I was a good son. Kill the flies, kill the ants, kill the spiders and so on, that's a good son. I had no intention to kill a living being.
Yet now, I understand this difference, I understand that an ant and a spider are living beings who want to live accordingly, to live their own life. So I have no intention anymore whatsoever to kill them, but as a child it was not an intentional killing of a living being, it was only an intention to clean the house. Even though the killing was exactly the same process.
We teach the compassionate intention that helps bring about a wish to avoid harm. As much as possible apply this compassionate intention to everything that you do. Do you need 42 pairs of shoes? A woman from the Philippines had over one thousand, yes! This is just one little example. Do you need as many clothes as you have? Do you need all the newspapers or magazines that you buy? These are ways to apply the compassionate intention. Can you slow down on using up the Earth's resources as much as possible, in anyway whatsoever? Can you be more compassionate on that level? That's part of what we feel is a deeper level of Morality.
Can you be more gentle in your relationships with others? That's another level of Morality, Compassion and Lovingkindness towards friends, family, people you know, people you don't know. That's all part of Morality, also. Every different thing you do in your life, if you are putting in the compassionate intention, being kinder and compassionate and patient and everything else that goes along with it. That's going to be this deeper level of Morality.