5.29

After more than twenty verses of largely impersonal language — Brahman, the Self, the Eternal, the Supreme — the chapter’s final verse pivots hard back to the first person, with Krishna naming himself directly as the recipient of sacrifice and austerity, the great Lord of all worlds, and suhṛt, friend, of all beings. Besant’s translation reaches for “the Lover of all beings” for suhṛd, a warmer word than the literal “friend” or “well-wisher,” and either way the term matters: it names a relational, non-transactional bond, and the same epithet resurfaces among Krishna’s self-descriptions later in the text, at 9.18’s śaraṇaṃ suhṛt, refuge and friend. Coming right after two verses of concrete meditation instruction, this final verse quietly reframes the entire preceding technique — sense-withdrawal, steadied breath, a stilled mind — as ultimately in service of recognizing a relationship rather than merely achieving a state, and with that the chapter closes on the word peace that has been its refrain since verse 12. Suhṛt sarva-bhūtānām — “the friend of every being” — makes the impersonal Brahman of the chapter’s middle addressable. The same pivot from ground to Lord happens at BG 4.35 and becomes the whole subject of chapters 7–12; Īśvara is the “who” of the peace this verse promises.