॥ ॥
In plain words
Water on a lotus petal trembles, never still; just so is life, exceedingly fickle. Know that the world is gripped by disease and pride, and the whole of it is stricken with sorrow.
Glittering, glittering on a lotus leaf, like a drop of water, it has no steadiness; life breeds the blight of attachment; the world is a curtain of gloom and sorrows. (Bhaja Govindam)
Just as we watch how a drop of water that cannot stay on a lotus leaf wastes away and passes in a moment, so the nature of human life, too, is something we must believe to be a life of the moment. The world is full of sorrow, the body is full of disease, and life is a mansion of worries filled with many kinds of unrest. It is impossible for us to experience such a life in sacred Divinity. Yet one of Śaṅkara's disciples taught this śloka to show that, in this very state of unrest, of things going against us, of sorrows, it is even very easy to experience joy, happiness and Śānti.
As long as one does not know who one is, sorrows cannot be escaped. Until one recognises Īśvara everywhere, these sorrows cannot be escaped. Until we recognise that Divinity, the Ātma that is the root and support through which every life, every birth, every death, every decline and every destruction takes place, this sorrow cannot be escaped. The lotus flower is born in water, stands in water, moves in water, lives in water and wastes away in water itself; just as that is its state, in just that way the principle of the jīva is born in the Ātma itself, rises in the Ātma itself, lives in the Ātma itself and merges in the Ātma itself: that is the inner meaning this śloka has been teaching.