Your most lasting possessions are your actions. If you really want to find safety, your strategy can’t involve killing, stealing, or telling lies.

"Your most lasting possessions are your actions. Your body is yours only till death; your loved ones, at best, are yours no longer than that. The results of your actions, though, can carry well past death, so make sure that you don’t sacrifice the goodness of your thoughts, words, and deeds to save things that will slip through your fingers like water. Specifically, this means that if you really want to find safety, your strategy can’t involve killing, stealing, or telling lies. At the same time, you can’t expose yourself to unnecessary dangers by taking intoxicants or engaging in illicit sex. These are the principles of the five precepts, and the Buddha taught them because they really work in safeguarding the people who observe them.

If you really want to protect your loved ones and other people around you from danger, remember that the same principle applies to them: Their most lasting possessions are their actions. So the best way to protect them is to teach them to observe the same five precepts. If they’re willing to listen to you, you can explain the precepts to them. If they’re not, you can teach the precepts by example — which, either way, is the only way to make the lesson stick."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Danger is Normal"

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