Sila follows dana in the standard sequence of six paramitas, and Mahayana commentary is careful to distinguish it from the narrower sense the same word carries in Vinaya monastic law, the codified rules governing a monk or nun's conduct. As a paramita, sila names not rule following itself but the settled ethical disposition that makes rule following almost unnecessary, a mind whose actions have stopped arising from the poisons and so no longer need external restraint to stay wholesome.
Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara treats the perfection under three headings that Mahayana scholasticism repeats widely: restraint from harmful action, the active cultivation of wholesome qualities, and conduct directed at benefiting other beings, a threefold scheme that keeps sila from collapsing into a merely negative list of prohibitions.
Rupert Gethin's survey of Buddhist foundations notes that this ethical layer sits beneath every other paramita in practice, since a mind still capable of serious harm to others cannot stabilise the concentration dhyana requires or see clearly enough for prajna, which is why sila, though listed second, functions as a precondition running underneath the whole sequence rather than a stage simply completed and left behind before moving to patience and diligence.