I'm not a fan of the whole concept of "religion" either, but its just for ease of reference.

Man you are deluding yourself with that not a lemming stuff. Your life is following the exact same pattern as millions of other people's. Your plan for life, your goals, they are very generic. You are the same as many other people who refuse to do busy-bee work like office jobs because it doesnt appeal to them. How many people do you know who really try to live by a set of these "religious rules"? Not that it matters, but they are far rarer than the people who don't pay stuff like that any consideration.

If you meant that by following these rules you would be less unique and acting the same way as many others, I dont see why, for the reasons I said in the previous paragraph.

And yo, these precepts actually improve your life. The "consequence" for breaking them is your own suffering and the suffering of others. I find that it is in my own interest to keep them as best I can... Here is an explination of two precepts:

6. I take up the way of not discussing faults of others. This Precept deals with an aspect of killing. More people get hurt by gossip than by weapons. The point is that nobody has a fixed character. Everyone has tendencies, and those tendencies can be used or misused, read or misread. The tendency to be accomodating can be seen negatively as passivity, and positively as patience. Encourage the tendency, and it will find its own perfection.

7. I take up the way of not praising myself while abusing others. The reason I praise myself and abuse others is that I seek to justify and defend myself as a certain kind of superior being.

Actually, I am not superior or inferior. My actions and words are appropriate or inappropriate to the needs of people, animals, plants and things, including myself. If I am authoritarian and put myself up and others down, then I am not meeting their need to grow and mature or my own to listen and learn. The balance is obscured. The world suffers.

__________________