tapah, swádhyáya, íçwara praòidhánani kriya yoga Austerity, study of scriptures and surrender to God is kriya yoga. Patanjali Yoga Sutras
tapah means austerity or practice of meditation. It also means watching the breath to maintain the body heat through which the life is maintained. Svádhyaya means study of the scriptures and also the study of your self. Eçwarapraòidhána is surrendering the fruits of your action to God. These three together is Kriya Yoga.
The path of love is to love God through breath, meditation and work. The heart center can be the source of either immense emotional satisfaction or intense emotional despair. By focusing on this cakrá and by developing our awareness through deep meditation, we can energize this center and make it a source of profound inner joy. First, by achieving the balance needed to deal with ups and downs with equanimity and secondly, by channeling our emotions into constructive channels. Self-love, which is the root cause of many of our problems today, will be replaced with an all-encompassing love for others. All of us have the same basic need; to love and to be loved. By turning the selfish love we feel toward ourselves and our immediate circle, into the warmth and compassion for all who share this earth, we will find ourselves released from the self-made prison of our emotions. We will be free at last to love wholly, without fear and without restraint. Through loving others, we love God, and that love returns to us a thousand-fold when it is given unselfishly and without ulterior motives.
How can such a state be achieved? Through the same process of relaxation, meditation and self-inquiry with which we overcome the downward pull of the other chakás. Selfish emotion drags the mind down, burdening it with feelings, which bury our spiritual energy and dissipate it in the joys and sorrows of the moment. True happiness and spiritual awakening require that we expand our emotions to envelop the entire universe and gain the riches therein.
Meditation in silence is even a better way of expressing love. Practice to be completely silent with love for God. If we can be really silent in meditation, that is real meditation. Imagine a mother who has not seen her only son, in a long time. The mother had many things to tell him. Many times he wrote to say he will be visiting her, but had not come. Finally he was coming and the mother is waiting. When there is a knock on the door and she opens it to behold the son, what happens? The son bows at her feet and she hugs him. At that time of union can they talk? Will they even look at each other? They hold on to each other without a look or a word. This is love in silence. God is the mother and we are the children. Sometimes words expressed can also cause confusion if not used in the right way. But in silence you communicate more. Very few know the art of communicating in silence. Express silent love in silence. Love God, in every breath. Through practice it comes.
In meditation there can be only you. Imagine a man traveling with a family of wife and an infant child, in the old days when the roads were not good and there were no bridges. He came to a big river and the only way to cross is by swimming. The man is tall, the wife is short and the child is small. The water is up to the man's neck and he does not know what the depth of the water is and it seems to be increasing with each step. The story goes on, the man tried to cross the river, with the child on the shoulders and the wife holding on to him, but the river is in flood. What can he do? There is no other way but to let go and swim alone. This is what happens in deep meditation. You cannot enter there with the body and mind. In silence and deep meditation the body and the mind create trouble through pain and thoughts. You have to overcome the body consciousness and the thoughts. Prayer can be in a crowd but meditation has to be alone.
Love is personal and in silence. It cannot be found in a crowd. Once you close your eyes you are alone. You should enter a state where there is no home, no roof and no body. If we can go to that state, real meditation can be experienced. It is natural for thoughts to come. Do not be worried, but do not entertain them by thinking along those lines. If you entertain a single thought, many more will come. Then you will be physically present but mentally absent.