SAUNDARANANDA 13.52: Building the Case against Enemy Number One

dRShTv" aikaM ruupam anyo hi
rajyate 'nyaH praduShyati
kash cid bhavati madhya-sthas
tatra' aaiv' aanyo ghRNaayate

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13.52
On seeing one and the same form

This man is enamoured, that man disgusted;

Somebody else remains indifferent;

While yet another feels thereto a human warmth.

COMMENT:
The 2nd line could be translated:

This man is turned on, that man off;

That translation might if anything be more exact. But would the register in that case be too colloquial? This is the kind of problem that an editor might help with. At primary school I was a precocious reader and at secondary school I was good at doing translations -- from Latin and from Spanish in particular. But I was never particularly good at English.

Anyway, the purpose of this verse is to establish facts in support of a pivotal statement made in the following verse about what causes us to get stuck and to get free.

And nobody needs to find four other people to corroborate the facts of this verse.

If I wish to remain permanently turned on by a woman's form, that is impossible. If I wish to always be turned off by a woman's form, that also is impossible. If I remain indifferent towards a woman's form, that is only a momentary state. If I say on the basis of a momentary state that I have become indifferent to a woman's form, I am deluding myself. If I try to be, or pretend to be, a man at the fourth level -- a man of true benevolence and compassion who on looking at a woman's form feels only human warmth -- that is just the essence of fixing.

The greatest threat to a man's integrity, as I see it, is neither a woman's form nor his own emotional reaction to a woman's form. The greatest threat to a man's integrity is trying to be, or pretending to be, something that he is not. Our greatest evil, as FM Alexander truly observered, is fixing.

EH Johnston:
On seeing a certain form one man is attracted, another dislikes it and a third is indifferent, while yet another feels compassionate disgust for the same object.

Linda Covill:
Upon seeing one and the same form, one person desires it, another repulses it, yet another remains indifferent, while someone else will feel compassion.

VOCABULARY:
dRShTva (absolutive of dRsh): seeing, after seeing
ekam (acc.): one
ruupam (acc.): n. form
anyaH (nom. sing. m.): another, the other man
hi: for

rajyate = 3rd pers. sing. of raJj: to redden , grow red , glow ; to be affected or moved , be excited or glad , be charmed or delighted by (instr.) , be attracted by or enamoured of , fall in love with (loc.
anyaH (nom. sing. m.): another
praduShyati = 3rd pers. sing. of pra-√duSh: to become worse , deteriorate; to be defiled or polluted , fall (morally); to become faithless, fall off

kash cid: someone
bhavati: is, becomes
madhya-sthaH (nom. sing. m.): being in the middle; standing between two persons or parties mediating , a mediator ; belonging to neither or both parties , (only) a witness , impartial , neutral , indifferent

tatra: therein; for that object
eva: (emphatic) that same one
anyaH (nom. sing. m.): another
ghRNaayate = 3rd pers. sing. of verb from ghRNaa: f. a warm feeling towards others , compassion , tenderness
ghRNa: m. heat , ardour , sunshine