Verse 55 — Samsara is Fear from Beginning to End

Understanding this samsara to be a cause of fear and grief in the beginning (childhood), in the middle (youth), and likewise in the end (old age), the seeker should give up all identification with the equipments. Renouncing all other prescribed practices, let him steadily contemplate the Self in him as the one infinite Self everywhere. [Verse 55]

The main obstacle to steady contemplation is the fluctuation of destiny — favourable and unfavourable circumstances arriving in turn. This verse addresses it head-on with a sober diagnosis.

Samsara offers no safe stage

The verse makes an uncomfortable but clarifying observation: worldly life is anxious at every stage — beginning, middle, and end.

Key idea. The path of acquisition and preservation (pravritti marga) is a constant cycle of yoga (getting) and kshema (keeping), and it inevitably breeds anxiety (bhaya) and frustration (shoka). Every pleasure born of contact "has a beginning and an end" — so the wise do not rejoice in it. Most people never notice this whirlpool; recognising it clearly (viditva) is the turning point.

The paradox of good and bad fortune

Here is a striking insight into how circumstances affect a seeker:

flowchart LR
    A[Unfavourable times] --> B[Vairagya & mumukshutva grow]
    C[Favourable times] --> D[Attachment grows,<br/>urgency fades]

Difficulties, rightly understood, are not simply misfortune — they can sharpen dispassion and seriousness. Comfort, misused, can quietly dissolve them. This is not a call to seek suffering, but to hold a firm conviction — gained in shravana — that the world is a fluctuating, unreliable bondage, so that neither fortune sweeps you away.

The instruction

Given this, the verse gives three moves:

1. Understand samsara's nature at every stage (adau, madhye, ante — beginning, middle, end).
2. Reduce extroverted activity — both worldly and ritual (laukika and vaidika karma) — turning inward and depending less on things and people.
3. Contemplate (bhajet) the Self — the inner essence of all beings — steadily, as jnana nishta.

The reward of turning inward is not isolation but self-reliance: depending on yourself for peace, security, and fulfilment rather than on the ever-changing world. Verse 56 gives the most beautiful images in the text for what this inner merger is actually like.