# Class One - Lineage **1) The title of the primary text used for this class is Hatha Yoga Pradipika.  Give the meaning of the word pradipika here, along with Sanskrit roots and related English words.** The Sanskrit word pradipika àdIipka means a lantern, or light; and also a star.  The idea is of a lantern or torch which is used to illuminate the path ahead in a culture where there is no electric or other lighting, and night is very dark.  Pradipika is made of two basic parts, pra and dipa.  Pra à means very much, or out front, and is found in the English words proud, prow, and forward—all with a meaning of out front.  Dipa dIp means a light, and comes from the Sanskrit root √dip dIp! , which means to shine.  Ultimately related are divine, and to think, in the sense of the light of the sky, and the light of understanding. **2) List a few of the important subjects found in each of the four chapters of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.  How do the chapters reflect the flow of our yoga practice?** (a) Chapter One: Lineage of the tradition; the proper place for practice; the need for goodness; the postures, or asanas; proper diet. (b) Chapter Two: Breathing practices, or pranayama; the six treatments, or kriyas; the eight capsules, or khumbaka. (c)  Chapter Three: The ten seals, or mudra. (d) Chapter Four: Deep meditation, or samadhi; royal (raja) yoga; voidness; prana, the inner channels, and death; dissolution, or laya; the seal of the sky dancer, or khechari; the practice of inner sound, or nada. Here is how the chapters reflect the natural flow of our practice: First and foremost there is always the Master—we must find an authentic Teacher, and learn from Them.  Then we must endeavor to practice all that They have taught us.  In order to do that, we must find a suitable place.  Then we must plant good karmic seeds by keeping our behavior pure, as we practice the asanas, in order for our mind to be a suitable vessel, and we must keep our body pure, by watching what we eat, in order for our body to be a suitable vessel.  The physical asana practice leads us to the deeper practice of pranayama—the science of the breath, and we are slowly drawing deeper within.  Slowly we learn to combine the physical postures with the retention of the breath, in the great art of making a seal of the body.  This sends our mind even deeper within, until we are ripe for the deepest practice: meditation.  We use everything we have learned so far to affect the inner winds in our body, so that we can reach a state of meditative stillness, and realize emptiness itself. **3) The first two verses of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika both contain essential elements required by tradition for beginning a book.  What is the very first idea mentioned in each of these verses?** The author bows down to the holy beings who have begun the lineage, and to his own Teacher, as the same person.  This indicates that the single most important thing for our own ultimate success in yoga is to rely upon an authoritative Master. **4) Explain the story of “the first one who taught the yoga of the sun and moon”:** The first human to receive this lineage is said to be Guru Matsyendra.  There is an ancient story of how he came to receive it from the Great Lord Shiva.  Matsyendra was fishing one day, and got swallowed by a whale, but continued to live inside its belly.  One day Lord Shiva’s holy consort, Umadevi, requested that Shiva teach her these profound instructions about moving the inner winds, or prana, in one’s body.  He agreed, as long as she found them a secret place to hold the teachings.  She built a house under the water that they went to, and he began to teach her, but Matsyendra was lounging inside the belly of his whale nearby, and heard the entire thing.  Lord Shiva, realizing this, granted him initiation, and he practiced inside his whale for twelve years, until he attained the state of a master yogin, at which time he came out and passed on the lineage to Guru Goraksha. **5) What are the Sanskrit words for royal yoga, and for yoga of the sun and moon?  Give also the Sanskrit roots, and related English words.  Finally tell how the two types of yoga are related.** The Sanskrit for royal yoga is raja yoga raj yaeg.  Raja means royal, and comes from the root √irj  \j! , meaning to direct.  Related English words are royal and regal. The Sanskrit for yoga of the sun and moon is hatha yoga hQ yaeg.  The word hatha is made of two parts, ha and tha.  Ha here refers to the sun, and the Indo-European root is sahwel, meaning the sun.  Related English words are helios and solar.  Tha refers to the moon, without any obvious root or English cognates. Hatha yoga emphasizes the outer, physical practices which prepare the channels: the asana exercises and breathing practices, for example.  Raja yoga emphasizes meditation and using meditation to perceive ultimate reality.  Ultimate reality is perceived by the mind when the inner winds or prana concentrate into the central channel.  Hatha yoga helps concentrate the winds here. **6) Give the name of the author of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and explain the meaning of this name, giving Sanskrit roots and English cognates.  Why has the author chosen to call himself this?  Include also the possible date of the author, and briefly what we know about his life.** The name of the author of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika is Svatmarama.  The word svatmarama SvaTmaram is made up of three parts: sva Sva, atma AaTm, and arama Aaram. Sva means self, and is found in the words suicide and self.  Atma means person, or nature.  The word probably derives from the negative a (as in amoral or agnostic) plus a root √tam, meaning to cut off, or set apart.  Atman thus means a discrete individual, indivisible. The English atom (a tiny, indivisible, part) would be a related word, as well as temple, which originally referred to a place that was cut off or set aside by a wall or fence for spiritual purposes.  The two pieces sva and atma joined together here into svatma mean self-nature, or true nature. Arama means pleasure, or bliss, and can also mean a pleasure garden.  It comes from a root √ram, meaning to be content. All the parts of the name together describe a person who is reveling in their own true nature, or emptiness: the ultimate goal of both hatha and raja yoga. Judging from the lineage tree contained in the text of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, and from the known date when Tibet as cut off from India by the Moghul invasion, we can very roughly estimate its date as 1500.  Although at present we have no other biographical information about the author, we can tell from details of how he describes deep retreat and the various yogic practices that he was not only a scholar but also had actually worked hard himself at perfecting the physical, moral, and meditation practices of yoga. **7) Explain the Sanskrit word parampara, and its importance for understanding the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.** The Sanskrit word parampara prMpra means lineage, and is often applied to the statement of a lineage found usually at the beginning of a text, to demonstrate that the work is of an authentic tradition.  The Tibetan tradition translates the word as to come down, from one person to the next, in a lineage.  Another expression from Sanskrit is karna parampara, meaning a teaching which has come down from ear to ear. Yogi Svatmarama includes the lineage early on in his text to assure us that its source is authoritative, as it has come down from more than 30 of the most famous yogis of ancient India.) **8) How does the lineage found in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika relate to the lineages for the practice of yoga in Tibet?  And how does it relate to the founders of the modern schools of yoga in India?  Finally, is the Hatha Yoga Pradipika a Hindu or a Buddhist text?** About the first third of the lineage listed in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika consists of great yogis who are forefathers of the yoga lineages of Tibet, and whose works are found in the Tengyur, or the collection of ancient commentaries from India written in Sanskrit and translated into Tibetan.   The dates of these yogis start around 800 AD, and end around 1000 AD, after which time the Moghul presence in India cut off almost all contact with the Tibetans.  The remainder of the lineage in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika represents an “underground” tradition which continued on in India under the Moghuls for 500 years, up to the present date. All the various modern schools of yoga in India, and now in the West, trace their roots back to the Yoga Sutra, and to the basic asana presentation found in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. The major figures of the lineage of yoga in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika are claimed by both Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  They lived in a time when the common thread of yoga united great practitioners of both traditions, who on the whole simply considered themselves yogis. **9) The Hatha Yoga Pradipika describes how those who have mastered hatha yoga are “born into power,” and “roam the universe,” for they have reached kala danda.  Explain the meaning of kala danda.** Kala danda means to slay death.  The Sanskrit word kala (ka#la) means time; it comes from a root √kal, meaning to drive or produce, with the English cognate car.  In yogic literature, “time” is another word for “death.” The word danda d{f means a stick or a club; a related Indo-European root is deru, meaning to be firm, and thus meaning a tree.  Related English words are rhododendron (from the Greek dendron, meaning tree) and endure, meaning to stay fast in the face of hardship.  We also of course see the Sanskrit in the name of the plank pose, or dandasana. The idea of the two words together then is to club death to death.