Why the pleasures of sense-contact are sources of pain, and why the wise take no delight in them
The thrill that comes when sense meets object is real enough while it lasts, yet it begins and ends in a moment, owning nothing of its own. The verse does not deny that it feels good; it points to the pain already folded inside it, the wound its own ending brings.
The pleasures born of contact are sources of pain. They have a beginning and an end. The wise do not delight in them.
Having just spoken of the yogin who finds joy within rather than without, Krishna now gives the reason: the joys gathered from outside are contact-born, fleeting, and so cannot satisfy a self that endures.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
The pleasures named here arise only when a sense meets its object; eyes touch a sight, the tongue a taste, and the flush of enjoyment passes through, owning nothing of its own.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Nīlakaṇṭha · Ramsukhdas · Puruṣottama · VallabhaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 7 others’ words
The pleasures this verse names are 'contact-born' (samsparsha-ja): they arise only when a sense organ meets its object. Eyes touch a sight, ears a sound, the tongue a taste, and a flush of enjoyment (bhoga) follows. Because they depend entirely on that meeting, they have no life of their own. They start when sense and object join and stop when the two part, so they are never something the enjoyer securely owns; they are momentary events that pass through, leaving the enjoyer where they found him.
Krishna calls these joys the very birthplace of pain, not joys that merely happen to fail; the thrill only seems like happiness, the way silver seems to shine in shell.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Dhanapati · Madhusūdana · Sivananda · Jñāneśvar · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Dhanapati, and 4 others’ words
Krishna calls these pleasures 'wombs of pain' (duhkha-yonayah): a womb is what something is born from, so these joys are the very birthplace of suffering, not merely joys that happen to fail. Several commentators stress the force of the word 'alone' (eva): there is not even a trace, not even the scent, of real happiness in them. The sensory thrill is hollow and only seems like pleasure, the way silver seems to shine in mother-of-pearl or water seems to glisten in a mirage. The fault is not occasional but built in.
Each of these pleasures has a beginning and an end, lasting only the brief middle moment; what is so fleeting cannot satisfy you, and its very loss becomes a fresh wound.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Dhanapati · Madhusūdana · Rāmānuja · Nīlakaṇṭha · Bhāskara · Tilak · Sivananda · Abhinavagupta · Ramsukhdas · Baladeva · Śrīdhara · VallabhaIn Śaṅkara, Dhanapati, and 11 others’ words
These pleasures 'have a beginning and an end' (adi-antavantah), and that is the core reason they breed pain. Their beginning is the joining of sense and object; their end is the parting of the two. So they last only the brief middle moment and are gone. What is fleeting cannot satisfy a self that endures, and the very loss of the pleasure becomes a fresh wound. Several commentators give homely proof: the joy at a son's birth is undone by his death; separation from what we enjoyed delivers sharp pain. The enjoyment writes its own ending into its beginning.
So the discerning one takes no delight in such pleasures; having seen their structure plainly, the attraction loosens of itself, with no grim straining against it.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Dhanapati · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Viśvanātha · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānuja · Bhāskara · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Dhanapati, and 9 others’ words
For these reasons the 'wise' or discerning person (budha, viveki) takes no delight in such pleasures, while only the deluded and undiscerning chase them. Delight in objects is the mark of the deeply ignorant, likened to cattle, to a thirsty deer running toward a mirage, to a fish drawn to the bait on the hook. The discerning one is not exercising grim willpower; having seen the truth of these pleasures, the attraction simply loosens of itself. Right seeing of their structure, not mere moral effort, is what frees the seeker.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators trace the pain back to ignorance (avidya) as its ultimate root: the contact-pleasures are 'made by ignorance,' and because pains are effects of nescience, pleasures prompted by nescience rightly carry pain within them. The point is pressed all the way: as in this world, so in the world beyond, by the force of 'alone' there is not even a trace of happiness in the whole round of transmigration, even up to the world of Brahma. One source draws on Yoga teaching that for the discerning everything is sorrow, by the sorrows of change, of burning anxiety, and of buried impression, and then sets the final view higher: these pleasures are themselves false, like a snake superimposed on a rope or things seen in a dream, having beginning and end because they are mere perception-creations. So the discerning man, his delusion gone by realizing the underlying ground, no more sets out for them than a man who knows a mirage runs to it for water. This is treated as the most grievous fault, hard to ward off, calling for more than ordinary effort to turn the senses away.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as a plain, honest description rather than a moral scolding. The pleasures have pain for their womb and pain for their sequel, and last only a short while; the knower of their truth does not delight in them. One source frames the verse as the practical move that makes leaving the senses possible: an aspirant fond of outer touches from beginningless time cannot simply drop them by command, but by seeing the faults of acquiring, of keeping, and of losing, the attachment is uprooted on its own. The image given is that the candle of joy is ringed round by ash; once that is steadily seen, the pull weakens by itself.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse tightly as a censure of desire-driven enjoyment offered for the sake of renunciation, that is, to support the path of giving up. One source clarifies a grammatical point and the connection to the next verse: although the following verse does not itself mention renunciation, this verse supplies the reason that serves the one who seeks renunciation, the causative being used in its plain sense of 'he censures.'
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators turn the verse into an argument that establishes, by contrast, where the soul's true home lies. Because the object-pleasures are born of prakriti (primal nature) and the prakriti-bound senses, and have a beginning and an end, they are seats of suffering and so cannot be the final goal of a human being; weighing them out shows them to be a net loss. By their very opposite, then, the joy of Brahman, which knows neither beginning nor end, is settled as the one fit goal for a soul that is the Lord's own portion. One source reads even the word 'wise' (budha) as Bhagavan himself, the knower of every rasa (flavor of delight): the worldly pleasures arise merely by prakriti's state, not by the Lord's wish, so the experience of relishing Him is fulfilled of itself, by His wish, for the devotee fit for His mood.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator reads the verse straightforwardly: the enjoyments grounded in the conjunction of senses and objects are wombs of pain, where 'womb' means cause, since pain arises from them; they are occasional and momentary, having beginning and end. The one who sees this fault takes no delight in them. This source then links forward to the next verse's portrait of the truly joined and happy yogin, the one able to endure the agitation of desire and anger even before release from the body.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator gives a compact reading focused on how the teaching is held in thought: one brings before the mind that the enjoyments born of outer objects are all of the form of a cause of pain, and, being so, are also impermanent. The fault and the fleetingness are presented together as a single recognition to be cultivated inwardly.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators frame the verse as the answer to an objection: if even the pleasures of agreeable objects must be left behind, how can liberation (moksha) count as the supreme human goal? The reply is matter-of-fact: even at their best these joys are run through with rivalry and envy, and they begin and end, so the seeker is right to refuse them. They stress that only the undiscerning truly become attached to sense-pleasure, and that the enjoyments are impermanent because they are drawn on by unseen past karma. One source unfolds this at length with vivid images: those caught in sense-objects are like a hungry man swallowing chaff, a deer chasing a mirage, worms content in pus, fish in the water of enjoyment, a mouse soothed by a cobra's hood; to call these 'pleasures' is as false as calling a poisonous root sweet, and the seeker should avoid them as one avoids poison.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators bring the verse close to lived experience. One describes the seeker going out in quest of joy, searching in perishable outer objects, failing to find it, and instead carrying home a load of sorrow; he counsels withdrawing the senses and fixing the mind on the blissful Self within, since the fleeting interval-pleasure is due to ignorance (avidya). Another states plainly that because contact-born enjoyments have a beginning and an end they become the cause of unhappiness, so the wise find no happiness in them. A third develops the contrast in detail: every prakriti-born pleasure leaves a man dependent and never free; the pleasures are inert (jada), changeful, and bounded by beginning and end, while the self is conscious, changeless, and free of beginning and end, so the self can never draw lasting joy from them. Because the soul is a portion of the Supreme, only the Supreme yields imperishable joy; the very word 'beginning-and-end-having' is offered as a medicine: the moment attention turns to 'pleasures come and go,' their grip on us loosens.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Take one word from this verse, 'beginning-and-end-having' (adyantavantah), and let it be your medicine. When some pleasure arrives, whether a comfort, a bit of praise, or the warmth of hearing your own view honored by another, do not argue with it or grit your teeth against it. Simply watch it come, and watch that it will go. Notice that the pleasure is inert and changeful, while you, the one watching, remain. The moment your attention rests on 'this comes and goes,' the sway of pleasure-and-pain over you grows quietly less. You are not being asked to manufacture indifference; you are being asked to see what is already true. And since you are a portion of the Supreme, the joy that does not come and go is not somewhere far off; it is found by turning toward That from which you can never be parted.
When some comfort or word of praise arrives, do not argue with it or grit your teeth; simply watch it come, watch that it goes, and rest in the joy that never parts from you.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
he pleasures this verse names are 'contact-born' (samsparsha-ja): they arise only when a sense organ meets its object. Eyes touch a sight, ears a sound, the tongue a taste, and a flush of enjoyment (bhoga) follows. Because they depend entirely on that meeting, they have no life of their own. They start when sense and object join and stop when the two part, so they are never something the enjoyer securely owns; they are momentary events that pass through, leaving the enjoyer where they found him.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya
Krishna calls these pleasures 'wombs of pain' (duhkha-yonayah): a womb is what something is born from, so these joys are the very birthplace of suffering, not merely joys that happen to fail. Several commentators stress the force of the word 'alone' (eva): there is not even a trace, not even the scent, of real happiness in them. The sensory thrill is hollow and only seems like pleasure, the way silver seems to shine in mother-of-pearl or water seems to glisten in a mirage. The fault is not occasional but built in.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar · Rāmānujācārya
These pleasures 'have a beginning and an end' (adi-antavantah), and that is the core reason they breed pain. Their beginning is the joining of sense and object; their end is the parting of the two. So they last only the brief middle moment and are gone. What is fleeting cannot satisfy a self that endures, and the very loss of the pleasure becomes a fresh wound. Several commentators give homely proof: the joy at a son's birth is undone by his death; separation from what we enjoyed delivers sharp pain. The enjoyment writes its own ending into its beginning.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrī Bhāskara · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya
For these reasons the 'wise' or discerning person (budha, viveki) takes no delight in such pleasures, while only the deluded and undiscerning chase them. Delight in objects is the mark of the deeply ignorant, likened to cattle, to a thirsty deer running toward a mirage, to a fish drawn to the bait on the hook. The discerning one is not exercising grim willpower; having seen the truth of these pleasures, the attraction simply loosens of itself. Right seeing of their structure, not mere moral effort, is what frees the seeker.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators trace the pain back to ignorance (avidya) as its ultimate root: the contact-pleasures are 'made by ignorance,' and because pains are effects of nescience, pleasures prompted by nescience rightly carry pain within them. The point is pressed all the way: as in this world, so in the world beyond, by the force of 'alone' there is not even a trace of happiness in the whole round of transmigration, even up to the world of Brahma. One source draws on Yoga teaching that for the discerning everything is sorrow, by the sorrows of change, of burning anxiety, and of buried impression, and then sets the final view higher: these pleasures are themselves false, like a snake superimposed on a rope or things seen in a dream, having beginning and end because they are mere perception-creations. So the discerning man, his delusion gone by realizing the underlying ground, no more sets out for them than a man who knows a mirage runs to it for water. This is treated as the most grievous fault, hard to ward off, calling for more than ordinary effort to turn the senses away.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the verse as a plain, honest description rather than a moral scolding. The pleasures have pain for their womb and pain for their sequel, and last only a short while; the knower of their truth does not delight in them. One source frames the verse as the practical move that makes leaving the senses possible: an aspirant fond of outer touches from beginningless time cannot simply drop them by command, but by seeing the faults of acquiring, of keeping, and of losing, the attachment is uprooted on its own. The image given is that the candle of joy is ringed round by ash; once that is steadily seen, the pull weakens by itself.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse tightly as a censure of desire-driven enjoyment offered for the sake of renunciation, that is, to support the path of giving up. One source clarifies a grammatical point and the connection to the next verse: although the following verse does not itself mention renunciation, this verse supplies the reason that serves the one who seeks renunciation, the causative being used in its plain sense of 'he censures.'
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators turn the verse into an argument that establishes, by contrast, where the soul's true home lies. Because the object-pleasures are born of prakriti (primal nature) and the prakriti-bound senses, and have a beginning and an end, they are seats of suffering and so cannot be the final goal of a human being; weighing them out shows them to be a net loss. By their very opposite, then, the joy of Brahman, which knows neither beginning nor end, is settled as the one fit goal for a soul that is the Lord's own portion. One source reads even the word 'wise' (budha) as Bhagavan himself, the knower of every rasa (flavor of delight): the worldly pleasures arise merely by prakriti's state, not by the Lord's wish, so the experience of relishing Him is fulfilled of itself, by His wish, for the devotee fit for His mood.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhedabheda
This commentator reads the verse straightforwardly: the enjoyments grounded in the conjunction of senses and objects are wombs of pain, where 'womb' means cause, since pain arises from them; they are occasional and momentary, having beginning and end. The one who sees this fault takes no delight in them. This source then links forward to the next verse's portrait of the truly joined and happy yogin, the one able to endure the agitation of desire and anger even before release from the body.
Śrī Bhāskara
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator gives a compact reading focused on how the teaching is held in thought: one brings before the mind that the enjoyments born of outer objects are all of the form of a cause of pain, and, being so, are also impermanent. The fault and the fleetingness are presented together as a single recognition to be cultivated inwardly.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators frame the verse as the answer to an objection: if even the pleasures of agreeable objects must be left behind, how can liberation (moksha) count as the supreme human goal? The reply is matter-of-fact: even at their best these joys are run through with rivalry and envy, and they begin and end, so the seeker is right to refuse them. They stress that only the undiscerning truly become attached to sense-pleasure, and that the enjoyments are impermanent because they are drawn on by unseen past karma. One source unfolds this at length with vivid images: those caught in sense-objects are like a hungry man swallowing chaff, a deer chasing a mirage, worms content in pus, fish in the water of enjoyment, a mouse soothed by a cobra's hood; to call these 'pleasures' is as false as calling a poisonous root sweet, and the seeker should avoid them as one avoids poison.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators bring the verse close to lived experience. One describes the seeker going out in quest of joy, searching in perishable outer objects, failing to find it, and instead carrying home a load of sorrow; he counsels withdrawing the senses and fixing the mind on the blissful Self within, since the fleeting interval-pleasure is due to ignorance (avidya). Another states plainly that because contact-born enjoyments have a beginning and an end they become the cause of unhappiness, so the wise find no happiness in them. A third develops the contrast in detail: every prakriti-born pleasure leaves a man dependent and never free; the pleasures are inert (jada), changeful, and bounded by beginning and end, while the self is conscious, changeless, and free of beginning and end, so the self can never draw lasting joy from them. Because the soul is a portion of the Supreme, only the Supreme yields imperishable joy; the very word 'beginning-and-end-having' is offered as a medicine: the moment attention turns to 'pleasures come and go,' their grip on us loosens.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If sense-pleasures really do feel good while they last, in what sense are they 'wombs of pain alone,' and is the wise person being asked to deny enjoyment or just to see it differently?
The verse is not denying that the thrill feels good; it is pointing to what is built into that feeling. The pleasure is 'contact-born,' alive only while sense and object touch, so it begins and ends within a moment and is gone. Because it is fleeting in this way, its very loss becomes a wound, and that is why it is called a 'womb' of pain: not a joy that occasionally fails, but the birthplace of the suffering that its own ending brings.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Some commentators add that even at their best these joys come mixed: they are run through with rivalry, envy, and anxiety, and the apparent pleasure is hollow, a seeming-shine like silver in mother-of-pearl or water in a mirage, owed to our not yet seeing clearly. So calling them painful is honest description, not gloom.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda
The wise person is therefore not asked to clamp down on enjoyment by force but to see its structure plainly: look honestly at the trouble of acquiring, keeping, and losing, and the attraction loosens of itself, the way a man who knows a mirage no longer runs to it for water. Seeing, not straining, is the freedom this verse offers.
Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Take one word from this verse, 'beginning-and-end-having' (adyantavantah), and let it be your medicine. When some pleasure arrives, whether a comfort, a bit of praise, or the warmth of hearing your own view honored by another, do not argue with it or grit your teeth against it. Simply watch it come, and watch that it will go. Notice that the pleasure is inert and changeful, while you, the one watching, remain. The moment your attention rests on 'this comes and goes,' the sway of pleasure-and-pain over you grows quietly less. You are not being asked to manufacture indifference; you are being asked to see what is already true. And since you are a portion of the Supreme, the joy that does not come and go is not somewhere far off; it is found by turning toward That from which you can never be parted.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
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