What are the benefits of keeping the lay precepts, if you're not a bodhisattva?

What are the benefits of keeping the lay precepts, if you're not a bodhisattva? I'm asking about doing so in a liberal (no infidelity or drug addictions) and to a conservative (no sex or glass of wine) way. Apologies if I've misunderstood them and there is a complete consensus on what the lay precepts are to be interpreted as. I thought that the point was to use them as a guide, so making up your own mind. Precept > a general rule intended to regulate behaviour or thought. Surely "general" here means incomplete not in the sense that we can break them, but not completely defined. ---------- Is it not obvious that murder is wrong, whereas the evil of eating meat is more **moot**: so that - even if wrong - it is a *lesser* breaking of the precepts.