पितासि लोकस्य चराचरस्य त्वमस्य पूज्यश्च गुरुर्गरीयान्।न त्वत्समोऽस्त्यभ्यधिकः कुतोऽन्यो लोकत्रयेऽप्यप्रतिमप्रभाव॥
pitāsi lokasya carācarasyatvam asya pūjyaś ca gurur garīyānna tvat-samo ’sty abhyadhikaḥ kuto ’nyoloka-traye ’py apratima-prabhāva
Word by word
The verse says
You are the father of this world, of all that moves and all that does not. You are what it should honour, its weightiest teacher. There is nothing equal to you — how could anything be greater, in all three worlds, you whose power has no likeness?
In plain words
He reaches for the largest words he has: father, teacher, beyond compare.
And they are all words about relationship rather than size.
Having been shown something with no edges, he is reaching for the vocabulary of family.
Where you've felt this · in parenting
A child who has only ever seen her mother at home watches her chair a difficult meeting, handling eight people who all want different things. On the way back she does not say you were impressive. She holds her hand a bit tighter, which is the only thing she has.
Going deeper
Reaching for family words after an encounter with the limitless is not a retreat into something smaller.
Arjuna has just spent twenty verses discovering that his categories do not fit. Here he chooses father and teacher — words that say nothing about scale and everything about position. They work precisely because they do not attempt to measure anything.
That is a deliberate move away from description and toward relation, and the next verse completes it.
It also marks where the chapter's argument is heading. The vision could not be comprehended, held, or stood outside of. What is left, when all of that has been tried and failed, is the kind of connection that never depended on comprehension in the first place — which is how people relate to their parents, long before they understand anything about them.