You are what you see - Chapter 13

दमः कः ?

चक्षुरादिबाह्येन्द्रियनिग्रहः ।

What is dama (दम)? It is the control of external organs such as the eyes.

We have two types of external organs; the gnanendriyas (ज्ञानेन्द्रिय) and the karmendriyas (कर्मेन्द्रिय) or the organs of perception and the organs of action. The faculties of hearing, touch, taste, smell and sight are the gnanendriyas (ज्ञानेन्द्रिय) or sense organs and the faculties of holding or grasping objects, locomotion, speech, procreation and extraction are the karmendriyas (कर्मेन्द्रिय). Dama (दम) is the control of these 10 external organs that includes the eyes or the faculty of seeing. Like we saw in the case of the mind, these external organs too are our privilege and dama (दम) doesn’t imply treating them as one’s enemy and fighting to gain control over them. It is also not about stopping to use them.

With regard to gnanendriyas (ज्ञानेन्द्रिय), dama (दम) is monitoring the inputs given by the sense organs to the mind and discriminating them as inputs that are conducive to one’s physical, mental and spiritual growth and inputs that are not. It is about ensuring that what one sees or hears are things that don’t disturb one’s mind by creating a turmoil. Even when one happens to see or hear something that is or an undesirable nature using one’s free will to disengage one’s sense organs from the sense object is dama (दम).

For the karmendriyas (कर्मेन्द्रिय), dama (दम) is monitoring one’s organs of action in a way that one’s response to the external world is appropriate and does not create disturbance for oneself and the world.

When one’s external organs focus on what should be focussed on one’s spiritual pursuit is more effective for there is conservation of energy and time that would otherwise get expended in wasteful activities. Dama (दम) also helps develop & preserve shama (शम) where unnecessary inputs are not given to the mind and also acts as a second line of defense when shama (शम) fails.

Like in the case of shama (शम) even with dama (दम) it is not suppression of one’s feelings that is implied by this virtue. What a seeker needs to do is be observant of the actions one’s external organs are engaged in and their effect on the mind and address whatever is causing disturbance in the mind by resolving the underlying issues.