Gorakṣaśataka 1–8: Experience, Guidance and Inner Stillness

svānubhūtam is understood as “experienced for oneself”.

For the damaged first half-verse, I provisionally follow Mallinson’s interpretation: the wise person does not fall into rebirth, whereas knowledge of erotic pleasure causes people to sink together (2012, pp. 266–267). bhavācyuta cannot be securely segmented to yield this meaning; in particular, “does not fall into” supplies an interpretation rather than a certain word correspondence. I interpret anyonya as “together”. The change of subject and the sentence boundary are interpretative. The second half-verse clearly contrasts the instructed and the uninstructed: even someone who has fallen can reach maturity through instruction. The Sanskrit wording remains unchanged.

Building a wall and digging a well illustrate movement upwards and downwards respectively. I do not derive a general moral judgement of these occupations from this comparison.

I retain Mallinson’s conjecture labhet, “one should obtain”. The reported manuscript form bhavet does not fit guruṃ as an object. The Sanskrit quotation published in 2019 instead reads bhajet, “one should turn to”.

I understand the steadiness of gaze, mind and breath as independent of an external form used to support attention. rūpālambanniśodhanam is linguistically damaged; “calming through reliance on an external form” is my provisional interpretation. The control quotation WBH2019 has rūpālambanarodhanam, with the clearer sense of restraint or stilling. Mallinson’s translation (2012, p. 267) conveys independence from a supporting form, but marks the ending as a crux. I retain the working text’s wording; the translation does not settle its grammar.

The statement describes liberation through a paradoxical account of the mind. “Neither asleep nor awake” does not refer to an ordinary state of sleep here. Mallinson replaces the markedly different manuscript passage with reference to the Haṭhapradīpikā.

The formulation connects liberation with a complete cessation of the breath’s movement. It belongs to the historical model of yoga; equating it with permanent physiological cessation of breathing would be inappropriate.