The result of observing the precepts is ease of body and unobstructedness of mind

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 streams of vehicles traveling in all directions—east, west, south, and north—without traffic rules, cars moving toward each other would collide if a driver's reaction were even slightly slow, resulting in the tragic scene of wrecked vehicles 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 cars, with consequences too dreadful to imagine. If there were no crosswalks and people crossed the road at will, the probability of being struck by vehicles would be very high.

One who understands this principle will not complain that traffic rules cause him many inconveniences and make his comings and goings unfree. That kind of freedom, purchased at enormous cost, is not the safest; freedom is not worth mentioning in comparison with life. At first, obeying traffic rules may feel unfree, but once it becomes a habit, all discomfort vanishes completely; obeying traffic rules comes to feel only natural and proper, and one even scolds and warns those who do not obey them. Every feeling is a matter of the mind. Once the mind is subdued, nothing remains of the matter—there is no longer any feeling of freedom or lack of freedom.

It is the same with the precepts. At first, when one keeps the precepts, one feels unfree, bound by all sorts of restraints—that is because it runs contrary to one's former habits. But once it becomes a habit, keeping the precepts feels entirely natural and proper; 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, whatever one does, acting at will, accords with the norms of the precepts; the mind is at ease with regard to the precepts, with no marks of precepts. It becomes keeping without keeping, guarding without guarding—there is no longer precept or non-precept, violation or non-violation. One stands completely transcendent above the precepts: no longer called a keeper of precepts, nor called a violator of precepts—natural, free, and at ease.