# An Easy Path to Emptiness **Answer Key, Class Eight: An Easy Path to Emptiness** *1) Master Svatmarama says that the methods of deep meditation on emptiness which he has taught us were “described by the masters of the past, following their own personal experience.”  How does this reflect the four requirements of an authentic yogic lineage? **An authentic yogic lineage should have four different qualities: four kinds of authenticity.  The first of these is that the lineage of empowerment into the yogic practice must have continued on up to us in an unbroken stream.** **Secondly, the blessings of the lineage must have remained in an unbroken stream, meaning specifically that the actual practices and personal experience of them must be living on within real people in a pure way, without any corruption.  This is the idea of "personal experience" mentioned by the Master here.** **Thirdly, the practical application of the lineage by students must continue on in the proper steps, meaning that before they undertake advanced yogic practices disciples must have been trained in a number of essential attitudes.** **The first of these attitudes is a motivation based on the fact that the entire world is in great pain, constantly suffering from outright physical and emotional disasters; seeing even the good things in their life constantly change and disintegrate; and living constantly under the ubiquitous threat of getting old and dying.** **The second is a real belief in the idea that it is possible for us, through our yogic practice, to reach a place where we can be of direct help to countless living beings in escaping from their pain.  And the third is some grasp of how the world really operates—through the medium of karmic projections on an empty world.** **The fourth quality of a true lineage is that throughout all the members of this lineage there is maintained a real attitude of respect and gratitude for the path itself; in the texts and other media used to pass it on; and most importantly for those who teach it.** *2) As he reaches the end of this particular section about the Skydancer and seeing emptiness, the Master bows down formally to the central channel; to the inner fire; to the white nectar; to the perception of emptiness; and to the feminine power.  What is the purpose of this obeisance, and what is the point of making it to inanimate objects rather than to an actual person? **As we continue through our spiritual journey—and as the central channel begins to open wider and wider—then we become more and more grateful for everything we have learned, and we see it in an increasingly divine way.**  **The central channel begins to open, for example, and out of gratitude we feel almost like thanking it—like bowing down to it.** **As this evolves further, we begin to perceive that all the precious things in our life have not just come from our Teacher, but _are_ our Teacher manifesting to us.  The sound of the surf, the beauty of a flower, a bluish star in the sky are all our Teacher speaking to us, sending us a message.** **This applies even for example to the central channel opening up within us, and to the inner fire beginning to blaze.  At some point we see them as our Lama herself, or himself; it's no wonder that the (largely male) yogis of the past might begin to think of their own inner fire as a person: as a Queen, as Kundalini.  And then we feel great faith, and seek to bow to Them.** *3) How does Master Svatmarama introduce the practice of sacred sound?  How is this practice of benefit, and in what circumstances?  What does this tell us about the practice of tolerance? **Master Svatmarama introduces the practice of sacred sounds by saying that it is recommended for those people who haven't yet been able to grasp, completely, the idea of emptiness and see it directly.  Focusing closely on a sound will, first of all, help us increase our powers of concentration in a very straightforward and easy way, helping to provide the meditative platform from which we can see emptiness.** **Generally speaking, focusing on outer objects of the senses is so gross that it doesn't really increase our concentration so noticeably.  Sounds though, as the Abhidharma literature notes, are especially ephemeral, and concentrating on them has a special benefit; especially in attempting to reach the clear light through a process of dissolution, comparable to the way that sound fades away.  We are much more likely to get more _quiet,_ and thus more _still,_ by attempting to concentrate upon a sound.  And the very impermanence of sound provides a stepping-stone to its more subtle quality of emptiness itself: the perception of subtle impermanence is traditionally considered a strong forerunner of the perception of emptiness.** **It's significant here that Master Svatmarama is openly suggesting that it may be necessary for some practitioners to almost "retreat" in a way, dropping back to an easier practice in order to make more steady progress in higher practices (such as the emptiness meditations of the Mahamudra).  This can either apply to practitioners who just are not yet at an evolutionary stage in their many lifetimes to go straight to emptiness meditations; or it may also apply to those who are at the necessary stage but are simply having a bad or sleepy day, for example.** **People who are at a higher evolutionary stage may be tempted to view people doing a more foundational practice as wasting their time, or gone off on a wrong tangent.  It's important for us to reflect that the more foundational practices have been taught by the same high Teachers who have brought us the advanced practices, because They have perceived that different people are at different levels and need different practices at different times.** **As such it's important for us to remain joyfully tolerant of all the practices we encounter which are bringing people up to a higher level—even as we push ourselves and others as far as we can possibly go at any particular time.** *4) We are told that the "practice of sacred sounds was taught by the protector, Goraksha."  How does Master Goraksha figure in the lineage of our text, and how does this tie into the Tibetan traditions of yoga?  What is the literal meaning of his name, and how does he himself explain its deeper meaning? **Master Goraksha is listed in the opening lines of the _Yoga of Sun and Moon_ as having been, along with Master Matsyendra, one of the very founders of the tradition of hatha yoga in our world.  We then see him listed in the expanded description of the lineage for our text, mentioned just before Master Virupa.** **Master Virupa, who is known in Tibet as "Birwapa" (a corrupted pronunciation of his Sanskrit name), is an important Indian yogi whose teachings became the basis for some of the secret traditions of the Sakya lineage of Tibet.  And so Goraksha himself, whose name in Tibetan is Ba Kyong, becomes a grandfather of the Tibetan lineages for hatha yoga.** **The _Ba,_ by the way, means _cow_ in Tibetan; and _Kyong_ means _protector,_ or _keeper._  These are reflected in the Sanskrit with the _Go (cow)_ and _raksha (protector)._  Here is how Goraksha himself explains the meaning of his name in the excerpt we've provided in the reading, from an ancient Tibetan translation of his own writings.** **The work is called _Advices on Meditating upon the Ultimate Nature of the Winds;_ which in Sanskrit is _Vayu Tattvam Bhavanopadesha._  Master Goraksha's name, as we've noted, literally means The Cowherd.  In the opening lines of his text, he indicates that he is tending the wandering cows of his right and left channels—the channels of the sun and moon—so that he can gather them into the middle channel.** **This central channel itself is called Rahula: the dark planet which devours sun or moon during an eclipse.  Master Goraksha then says that he himself is Rahula, and that it is amazing how he can devour the sun and moon: the ultimate goal of _ha-tha_ yoga.** **5) ==What, according to Master Svatmarama, is the "highest practice of all" for reaching the dissolution into the clear light?  What is the full Sanskrit for this practice; how does the term break down into two parts; and what are two ways of its practice?==** **The Master says that the First of All Lords—the primal form of our own Teacher—has taught countless practices for attaining the dissolution.  But the one which stands above all others is that of following after the sacred sound.** **The Sanskrit term for this practice is _nada anusandhana._  The word _nada_ here means _sacred sound,_ or _inner sound,_ and may be related to the English _note,_ in the sense of a musical note.  Anusandhana_ means _to follow after._  The idea is of closing our eyes and listening for the inner sound.  We can begin preparing for this practice though by closing our eyes in a comfortable meditative posture and trying to follow soft outer sounds closely.** **6) What important traditional qualifier does Master Svatmarama give in expressing his opinion about which practice of dissolution is best, and how might we reflect this in our own practice?** **The Master is careful to say that it is _only his opinion_ that the practice of sacred sound is the best for the practice of dissolution.  Here first of all he is seeking not to downplay the countless valuable practices mentioned by his Teacher, the Primal Lord.** **But more importantly he is in this single statement undertaking an important practice that the Tibetans refer to as _kengpa kyung:_ an act of humility.  This is often expressed at the very beginning of a teaching or work so that the speaker or author can remind themselves of the severe danger of pride as we begin more and more to draw the attention of those who are seeking a path out of their suffering.** **This type of pride has caused the downfall of countless religious teachers and disrupted the sweet teaching of millions of hopeful disciples.  It sneaks up on us completely unaware, and we have to make conscious efforts to detect it when it is still small, growing inside of us.  One way of doing this is to make a habit of making a formal declaration of humility, as our Teacher is doing here.** **7) Describe the details of taking the physical pose which accompanies the practice of sacred sound.** **The Master tells us first to assume the Pose of Freedom, or Muktasana.  This pose was presented in the first chapter of the _Yoga of Sun and Moon,_ as being another name for the Siddhasana, or Master's Pose.  In this pose we place the heel of one foot at the perineum and the other stacked atop it, stimulating both the root chakra and the small chakra at the end of the sexual organ.  We are also told during this pose to press the chin to the chest; remain motionless; and concentrate upon the spot between the eyebrows.** **We then take the Seal of the Bringer of Peace: Shambhavi Mudra (we've also translated ”Shambhavi" for the central channel as "Lady Blissgiver").  We saw this earlier in the fourth chapter as referring to the practice of "neither opening nor closing our eyes, concentrating on the sign within," and "bringing the winds to dissolve inside."** **We listen to the inner sound coming in our right ear.  We block the passageways of the two ears and two eyes; block the nose, and also the mouth.  This is done by raising the two hands, palms to the face; using the third and fourth fingers to seal the lips; the middle fingers to block the nose (if you're staying in the pose for some length of time, you'll be leaving some tiny space here to breathe); the first fingers to hold down the eyelids; and the thumbs to close the ear holes.** **8) What exactly are we listening for during this listening practice, and how?  Where is the sound coming from, and why?** **What we are listening for is an inner sacred sound, using single-pointed attention.  "Single point" here means "single object": we are focused on the sound alone, freed completely from all other background thoughts or perceptions.  (We'll be describing what sounds you might hear later on.)** **This sound is "set free" when the channels begin to be purified: when they are "immaculate" in the sense of our negative emotions diminishing noticeably.  This applies especially to our greatest negative emotion: the habit of seeing things as coming from their own side.** **This sound "travels down" the central, or ”sunray" channel, because it has begun to open wider, become "pure," with winds moving in from the two side channels as the emotions which ride upon them diminish.** **9) It is said that hearing the sacred sound within requires purifying the channels.  Give some detail on different ways that we could do this, referring to a traditional commitment for yogis.** **The commitment which applies here to purifying the inner channels is the one where we promise ”to work from both the outside and the inside."  What purifies the channels enough for us to begin hearing the inner sacred sound is nothing other than all the practices that we've learned so far in our text: the practices of both hatha and raja yoga.** **On the hatha side, we need to be doing our asanas, pranayama, kriyas and mudras; eating well and living in a quiet, ethical, and contented lifestyle.  On the raja side we need to be doing our mahamudra meditations and mental khechari practices.  With these we are far enough along to ride the practice of inner sound to the direct perception of emptiness.**