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The (1) five organs-of-action, such, as speech etc., the (2) five organs-of-perception, such as the ears etc., the (3) five Pranas, the (4) Five Element starting with space, along with the (5) discriminative intellect (buddhi) etc. and also (6) ignorance, (7) desire and (8) action-these eight 'cities' together constitute the subtle body.
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After describing the gross-body in all details, Sankara took up in his logical unravelling of the Science and Art of Vedanta, the description of the subtle-body. Here in the stanza under discussion he is summing up all the factors that together constitute the subtle-body. The organs-of-action and the organs-of-perception and the five Prāņas were already discussed in the previous stanzas. The five Great Elements are that which in their mutual combinations become the very material-cause for the world-of-objects recognised by us, and the very same Elements in their subtle form goes into the building up of the subtle-body.
The discriminative intellect etc. is a term used in this stanza to indicate all the factors that together make up the "inner-equipment" (antahkarana). All these can express themselves only when there is the non-apprehension of Reality and this ignorance of the spiritual truth in our subjective personality is called Avidya.
When the true nature is not known, human mind imagines things which are not there, and thus an individualised ego sense rises when the universal oneness is not cognised. This individuality experiencing its own limitations comes to suffer a gnawing sense of restlessness and discontentment. Human intellect conceives and plans various possibilities by which the confused ego can come to experience its unlimited true nature of perfections. These plans suggested by the intellect are called "desires."
Thus avidya generates "desires" and the desires expressed at the body-level in the world around are the "actions". All these eight factors, expressed here as "eightcities"-together in their totality constitute the subtle-body.
* Verse 96.
