StudyVedanta
Tattva Bodhaतत्त्वबोधः
Tattva Bodha · passage 7

Restraint

दमः कः? चक्षुरादिबाह्येन्द्रियनिग्रहः ।
In transliteration
damaḥ kaḥ? cakṣurādibāhyendriyanigrahaḥ |
In English

What is dama? The reining in of the outer senses, the eye and the rest.

In plain words

What is dama (restraint)? Control of the outer senses, such as the eyes.

In the commentaries

Sri SankaraAdvaita

Where calm settles the mind within, restraint governs the gates through which the mind reaches out: the eye, the ear, and the other senses that run toward their objects. Dama is not the starving of the senses but the holding of them back from their wandering, so that an object met outside cannot undo the quiet won inside. Restraint follows calm because inquiry asks for a mind no longer dragged outward through these gates, and so it guards the calm that came just before it.

Advaita framework: Sankara on the inner and outer instruments (antaḥkaraṇa and bāhya-karaṇa) and on indriya-nigraha (Bhagavad Gita Bhasya 2.61, 2.68); read with the living exposition of Tattva Bodha by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Paramarthananda, and Swami Chinmayananda.
The crux
Calm has already stilled the mind, so why does the path next ask you to rein in the senses?

Calm and restraint are named one after the other. What does restraint take charge of that calm does not?

  • The outer senses, the eye and the rest, where they reach toward objects
  • The mind itself, which calm has already settled
  • The breath, drawn in and held during meditation
  • The body, kept still in a steady seat
Show the answer
The outer senses, the eye and the rest, where they reach toward objects. Calm settles the mind within; restraint governs the outer senses through which the mind reaches out. The two are paired so that one quiets the inner instrument and the other the outer.

Restraint reins in the senses. What is it asking of you?

  • To hold the senses back from wandering toward objects, so the mind's quiet is not undone from outside
  • To deaden the senses until they no longer report anything
  • To shut the eyes and ears off entirely from the world
  • To enjoy each object fully so that desire wears itself out
Show the answer
To hold the senses back from wandering toward objects, so the mind's quiet is not undone from outside. Restraint is not the starving or deadening of the senses but the holding of them back from their wandering. A sense left to run brings the mind a fresh object and breaks the calm; reined in, it lets that calm hold.

Reining in the outer senses

Calm has just been named as the stilling of the mind. Restraint comes next, and it turns from the mind within to the senses that face outward: the eye, the ear, and the rest, the gates through which the mind reaches toward what it sees and hears and touches. To rein these in is restraint.

This is not a shutting of the senses off, nor a starving of them, nor a deadening until they report nothing. The senses are held back from their wandering, not killed. An eye that roams brings the mind a fresh object, and the calm won a moment ago is undone from outside. Reined in, the eye lets that calm hold. So restraint is the steady companion of calm: one settles the mind, the other keeps the world from unsettling it again.

This is why restraint follows calm. Inquiry needs a mind that is not forever dragged outward through the gates of the senses. First the mind is quieted; then the gates are kept, so the quiet lasts.

Which of your senses, left to wander, most often brings your mind the object that breaks its quiet?

All passages