Sanskrit
ये हि संस्पर्शजा भोगा दुःखयोनय एव ते । आद्यन्तवन्तः कौन्तेय न तेषु रमते बुधः ॥
ye hi saṃsparśajā bhogā duḥkhayonaya eva te ādyantavantaḥ kaunteya na teṣu ramate budhaḥ
Translation
The delights that are contact-born, they are verily wombs of pain, for they have beginning and ending, O Kaunteya; not in them may rejoice the wise.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Pleasures born of sensory contact get an unusually blunt label here — wombs of pain — not merely disappointing eventually but pain-generating by their very nature, since anything with a beginning and an end necessarily carries the anxiety of anticipated loss even while it’s being enjoyed. The wise one declines them not out of asceticism for its own sake but because the arithmetic doesn’t work out: a pleasure that must end was always partly grief, arriving early. It’s the same impermanence logic behind the previous verse’s claim of imperishable bliss, argued now from the losing side of the ledger.