To live is to act, and our action can have either harmful consequences for ourselves and others. Buddhist ethics is concerned with the principles and practices that help one to act in ways that help rather than harm. The corn ethical code of Buddhism is known as the five precepts, and these are the condensed form of its ethical principles. The precepts are not rules or commandments, but "principles of traning" , which are undertaken freely and need to be put into practice with intelligence and sensitivity.