ये हि संस्पर्शजा भोगा दुःखयोनय एव ते। आद्यन्तवन्तः कौन्तेय न तेषु रमते बुधः॥५-२२॥
ye hi saṃsparśa-jā bhogā duḥkha-yonaya eva te | ādy-antavantaḥ kaunteya na teṣu ramate budhaḥ || 5.22 ||
Sense-born pleasures are wombs of sorrow — they have a beginning and end; the wise takes no delight in them.
Word by word (8)
- ye hi
- — those indeed / for those which
- saṃsparśa-jāḥ
- — born of sense-contact / arising from contact between senses and objects
- bhogāḥ
- — pleasures / enjoyments / sense gratifications
- duḥkha-yonayaḥ
- — wombs of sorrow / sources/origins of suffering (yoni = womb, origin)
- eva te
- — indeed those / verily they are
- ādy-antavantaḥ
- — having beginning and end / time-bound / not eternal
- kaunteya
- — O son of Kunti (Arjuna's address — intimate)
- na teṣu ramate budhaḥ
- — the wise one does not delight in them / the discerning person takes no pleasure there
Pleasures that arise from contact between senses and objects (saṃsparśa-jā bhogā) are duḥkha-yonayaḥ — literally 'wombs of sorrow.' The image is precise: just as a womb gives birth, these pleasures give birth to suffering. Why? Because they are ādy-antavantaḥ — they have a beginning and an end. Whatever begins will end. Whatever ends brings loss. The budha — the one who truly understands — does not delight in these pleasures, not because they lack taste, but because he sees where they lead.
A modern analogy
A person who has eaten a favourite meal a hundred times eventually notices: the first bite brings the most pleasure, the last brings almost none, and within an hour the memory fades — replaced by hunger again. The pleasure was real but self-exhausting. The wiser person notices this cycle and stops chasing the peak, not because pleasure is bad, but because the chase itself produces restlessness (the 'womb of sorrow' V22 names). The hedonic treadmill — running faster to stay in the same place — is duḥkha-yonayaḥ in modern language.
What it does NOT mean
This verse is not a blanket condemnation of pleasure or sensory experience. Krishna does not say pleasures are evil — he says they are duḥkha-yonayaḥ (sources of sorrow) because of their inherent impermanence. The wise person is not ascetic by force — he simply sees clearly what saṃsparśa-born pleasure actually produces in the long run. Seeing clearly, the delight naturally shifts away from them.
Take with you
- Duḥkha-yonayaḥ — 'womb of sorrow' is not moral language; it is causal language. The problem is not that pleasure is sinful — it is that sense-born pleasure structurally produces sorrow because it is ādy-antavantaḥ (time-bound).
- Ādy-antavantaḥ: any experience that has a beginning will have an end. The ending of pleasure is experienced as loss or craving. This is the mechanism by which sense-pleasure generates suffering — not in the pleasure itself but in the inevitable contraction when it ends.
- Na teṣu ramate budhaḥ: the budha (wise one) does not suppress delight by willpower — he simply sees the full cycle (pleasure → ending → loss → craving again) and finds that clear seeing itself releases the grip of the pleasure-pursuit.
V22 delivers one of the Gita's most pointed analytical verdicts on sense-pleasure. The compound duḥkha-yonayaḥ is the key: yoni means 'womb' or 'origin' — pleasures are not merely accompanied by sorrow, they are its womb. They generate sorrow from within themselves. The mechanism is named in the next phrase: ādy-antavantaḥ — 'having beginning and end.' This is the philosophical reason, not a moral judgment. Whatever is conditioned by time (ādi = beginning, anta = end) cannot deliver unconditional happiness. The person who seeks unconditional happiness in conditional pleasure has misidentified the source. The budha — from the root budh (to know, to be awake) — is the one who has actually perceived this mechanism rather than merely heard it. Perception of this fact, for Shankaracharya, is itself a step in viveka (discriminative understanding) — the first of the four prerequisites for Vedantic inquiry. V22 therefore functions as a pointer: if sense-pleasures are duḥkha-yonayaḥ by nature, the seeker is redirected toward the akṣaya sukha of V21 — the inexhaustible joy found within.
Advaita lens
From Advaita's standpoint, sense-pleasures are temporary modifications of the mind (vṛttis) — not the Self's actual nature. The pleasure does not belong to the ātman; it belongs to the antaḥkaraṇa (inner instrument) conditioned by guṇas and sense-contacts. Because the ātman's nature is intrinsically ānanda (bliss), the pursuit of sense-born pleasure is a confusion of cause and effect — it seeks outside what is already present within as the ātman's own nature. Shankaracharya notes that only jñāna — which reveals ātman as sat-cit-ānanda — can end this confusion permanently. Renouncing pleasures by willpower alone (without jñāna) does not resolve the confusion; it merely suppresses the symptom.
Karma-Yoga lens
From karma-yoga's perspective, V22 is not a call to stop experiencing pleasure but to stop being run by it. The karma-yogi acts in the world fully — eats, works, interacts — but the identification with sense-contact pleasure as the primary source of wellbeing has been relinquished. This relinquishment is not dryness but freedom: action flows from duty (dharma) and inner contentment, not from the compulsion to grasp at pleasures before they end.
Modern parallels
Research on the hedonic treadmill (Brickman & Campbell, 1971) demonstrated empirically what V22 states philosophically: positive life events (winning the lottery, getting a promotion) produce a temporary spike in happiness followed by rapid return to baseline. Negative events similarly produce a drop followed by adaptation. The sense-contact pleasure that peaks and fades is neurologically identical to duḥkha-yonayaḥ — the return to baseline feels like a loss. Buddhism's first Noble Truth (dukkha) identifies the same mechanism: suffering arises from craving impermanent experiences as though they were permanent.
Practice
Bring to mind a recent pleasure that has now passed. Notice what the mind does at the memory — does it reach for repetition? Notice that reaching quality. Now bring to mind the quality of simple presence — awareness itself, not holding any object. Notice: does awareness reach for anything? That non-reaching quality of awareness is the beginning of what V21 calls vindati ātmani — the joy found within that needs no sense-contact.
Public-domain translations (6) compare all →
"Those enjoyments that are born of sense-contacts are indeed wombs of sorrow — they have a beginning and an end, O Kaunteya. The wise one does not delight in them." [1]
"The enjoyments that are born of contacts are only sources of pain, for they have a beginning and an end, O Kaunteya. The wise man does not rejoice in them." [4]
"The enjoyments that are contact-born are only wombs of pain, having beginning and ending, O Kaunteya; not in these does the wise man rejoice." [5]
"Since those enjoyments which are contact-born are only wombs of pain — having beginning and end — the wise man, O Kaunteya, finds no happiness in them." [6]
"For, lo! the pleasures that are born of sense-contacts are but sources of sorrow, they have beginning and end, Kaunteya — the wise man takes no joy in them." [7]
"For the enjoyments produced from contact with objects of sense are only sources of pain — they have a beginning and an end. The wise man, O son of Kunti, does not delight in them." [9]
This verse speaks to
Where this thread continues
Unattached to outer touches, finding joy within — joined to Brahman-yoga, the soul enjoys inexhaustible bliss.
Heat and cold, pleasure and pain — they come and go. Learn to endure them without being swept away.
Rājasic sukha: arises from sense-object contact — nectar-like at first, poison-like at the end.
Rāga and dveṣa lie in every sense-object. Do not come under their power — they are enemies on the path.
Arjuna sees his own people ready to die — and his body breaks before his mind can argue.
Bow down, arrows scattered, warrior collapsed — this is where the Gita begins.