The Result of Observing Precepts Is That the Body Is at Ease and the Mind Is Unobstructed.

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Venerable Aniruddha said: 我以持身，身得自在，次第持心，心得通达。

Precepts are like traffic rules. Because the roads are filled with bustling traffic traveling in all directions—east, west, south, and north—without traffic rules, vehicles heading toward each other would collide if a driver's reaction were a bit slow, resulting in the tragic scene of wrecked cars and lost lives. If there were no traffic lights, vehicles, horses, and people would become entangled together, and no one could move. If driving on the right side were not mandated, people would collide with one another, and people would collide with vehicles, with unthinkable consequences. If there were no crosswalks and people crossed the road at will, the probability of colliding with vehicles would be very high.

Those who understand this principle will not complain that traffic rules cause them many inconveniences and make their travel unfree. That kind of freedom obtained at great cost is not the safest; freedom is not worth mentioning compared with life. At first, obeying traffic rules may feel unfree, but once it becomes a habit, all discomfort will vanish completely, and obeying traffic rules will feel perfectly natural, to the point of reprimanding and warning those who do not obey them. All feelings are matters of the mind. Once the mind is subdued, nothing is a problem anymore, and there is no longer any feeling of freedom or lack of freedom.

The precepts are the same. At first, when keeping the precepts, one feels unfree and bound by various constraints, because it runs contrary to one's former habits. But once it becomes a habit, keeping the precepts feels perfectly natural; all feelings of discomfort and constraint automatically disappear. There is no thought of violating the precepts, nor any feeling of keeping or upholding them. At this point, all actions are carried out at will, yet all conform to the standards of the precepts; the mind is at ease with the precepts, without any mark of precepts. It becomes keeping without keeping, observing without observing—there is no precept or non-precept, no violation or non-violation, completely transcending the precepts. Such a person is neither called a keeper of the precepts nor a violator of the precepts—natural, free, and at ease.