ततः पदं तत्परिमार्गितव्यं यस्मिन्गता न निवर्तन्ति भूयः ।तमेव चाद्यं पुरुषं प्रपद्ये ।यतः प्रवृत्तिः प्रसृता पुराणी॥
tataḥ padaṃ tat parimārgitavyaṃyasmin gatā na nivartanti bhūyaḥtam eva cādyaṃ puruṣaṃ prapadyeyataḥ pravṛttiḥ prasṛtā purāṇī
Word by word
The verse says
Then that place must be searched out, the place where those who go do not come back. And I take refuge in that first Person, the one this ancient flowing-out came from.
In plain words
Cutting is only half of it. Something has to be looked for.
The word is strong. Not stumbled upon - searched out, the way you search for a thing you have decided you need.
Then Krishna does something he almost never does. He stops teaching for a moment and speaks for himself: I take refuge in that first Person. The teacher takes the posture he is describing.
Where you've felt this · in study
Your cousin spent four years starting things. Six months of a design course, a year of accounting, then a bank job she left before the second winter. One evening she sat down with a notebook and asked a different question. Not what pays, not what her father would like, but what she would still want to be doing at sixty. The answer took her two weeks and it was teaching. The four years were not wasted, but nothing moved until she went looking on purpose.
Going deeper
Searching on purpose is a different act from drifting into something, and this half-line turns on it.
Parimārgitavyam means it has to be sought out. Most of what we end up doing arrived by accident - a job that came up, a city a friend was already living in. The verse says the thing actually worth going toward does not arrive that way. You have to go after it.
The second half is unusual enough to stop on. Mid-teaching, Krishna says that he takes refuge. He is not standing outside the surrender he recommends. A reader who has been hearing instructions suddenly hears a person.
For you the useful part is the order. Chapter 2 said you cannot simply stop wanting things - the taste for them goes only when something better is actually found. Letting go and looking are one move, not two, and the looking is the half people skip.