Yes, it is the verbs which are important here. उद्घाटन and  विभेदन are what are being compared. 

भेदन , विभेदन is Kundalinee saadhanaa related term . There is a भेदन , विभेदन  of each chakra. This is a process of revealing/unfolding each of these entities/aspects that are already existing but closed to one's own experience, to one's own experience. The procedures for  भेदन , विभेदन of each chakra are to be executed under the Guru's guidance.   

Hatha here refers to (the courage/perseverance for ) overcoming the hesitation/fear or fearlike state experienced during the moment of  भेदन , विभेदन. 

There is a skill and insistence involved in turning the key through the levers inside the lock, while groping for the levers and waiting for the  moment of the notches of the key fitting the levers and turning immediately once that matching/fitting is felt with the optimum amount of force and skill. 





On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 5:33 AM Zoe Slatoff via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Jim,

I was just looking at this verse recently when considering different definitions of haṭha and I wonder whether perhaps the verbs are the issue rather than the simile? I’m sure you probably know more about this than I do, but it seems to me that once the kuṇḍalinī is awakened (which I know can take some force) it should actually arise quite easily like a key unlocks a door?

Best wishes,
Zoë

On May 14, 2021, at 4:45 PM, James Mallinson <jm63@soas.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear colleagues,

I wonder if anybody can help me understand a simile in a haṭhayoga text I’m editing, the Vivekamārtaṇḍa. Verse 34 reads:

udghāṭayet kapāṭaṃ tu yathā kuñcikayā haṭhāt |
kuṇḍalinyā tathā yogī mokṣadvāraṃ vibhedayet ||

My incomplete translation is as follows: “The yogi should use Kuṇḍalinī to break open the doorway to liberation in the same way that one might use a kuñcikā to force open a kapāṭa.” I had been translating kuñcikā as “key” and kapāṭa as “door”, but this isn’t altogether satisfactory. A key does not force a door to open. But I am unable to think of what this kuñcikā and kapāṭa might be. I am aware that a kapāṭa is usually a double door (I think of saloon doors in cowboy films) but what then is the kuñcikā? Of course it is quite possible that it is just a rather sloppy simile.

All the best,

Jim
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--
Nagaraj Paturi
 
Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.


Director, Indic Academy
BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra
BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.
Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru
BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership
Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies, 
FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education, 
Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.