About This Answer
Asked how a lay Buddhist in America might practise, including morality and sexual conduct, Ajahn Pannavaddho first says people need a reason for restraint. Many in the West carry a childhood picture of a God writing deeds in a black book, which one might hope to evade. With morality, he says, there is no evading it, because the book writes itself: you always know what you have done, and it goes in as a cause that later brings its result.
Repeated harmful actions change a person's character, making them duller and less able to see their own faults, so they sink further. Morality is a kind of mental hygiene that keeps one's proper human status, much as people wash to avoid bodily disease while ignoring diseases of the mind. He recommends the five precepts: not killing people or animals, not stealing, no wrong sexual conduct, no false or harmful speech, and no drink or drugs.