Verse 5.22

Verse 5.22: For, the enjoyments that there are, born of (sense—) contacts, they are (all) sheer wombs of misery; they have a beginning and an end, O Son of Kunti; a wise man finds no joy in them. (109)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

Just consider well, who do fall a prey to the deceitful pleasure of the sense-objects. Only those that have not yet had the vision of the Essence of Eternal Being get deluded by the sense-objects. Just as a poverty-stricken, hungry person swallows even chaff, or just as a thirst-stricken deer, through delusion, forgets the real form of water and runs towards a barren tract mistaking it for water; in the same way only those that have never seen the Eternal Self and who have hardly any idea of the happiness of Eternal life of the Self, feel pleased with the pleasures of sense-objects. To speak the truth, there is absolutely no pleasure worth the name in the enjoyment of senseobjects. If there be any real happiness in them why one could not as well have light in the world with the flash-light of lightning? Where is the need of constructing, in mortar, three-storied buildings, if the clouds in the sky are able enough to give shelter with their shadows against wind, rain and heat? The words “sense-objects produce pleasures” are a misnomer, being meaningless just as it is, to call a poisonous bulbous root sweet, or just as it is to call the inauspicious planet Bhauma (Mars) as “Mangala” (auspicious), or to call mirage as water through delusion. In all these ways it is fruitless to use the word “pleasure” in regard to sense-objects. This apart—just tell me what pleasure would the shadow of the hood of a serpent give to a mouse? O Son of Pandu, fleshy coating of the bait, attached to the hook (of the fishing rod) appears attractive to a fish so long as it has not swallowed it. Similar is the state of the sense-contacts, these sense-objects appear fatty, O Kiriti, as appears the swollen body of one affected with the disease anaemia. Therefore, the illusive pleasure felt in the enjoyment of sense-objects is simply pain and nothing else from beginning to end. But yet what should the ignorant do since they cannot help enjoying the sense-objects? Being ignorant of the inner secret, they enjoy the sense-objects with great liking. Do the worms in the mire of pus ever feel any nausea for it? To those miserables, that misery itself is their very life as it were. They are the frogs in the mire of the sense-objects,—the fish in the waters of the enjoyment; how could then they abandon that mire and water? These sense-objects are all sheer hot-beds of misery—viz creators of misery. Were mortal souls to remain neutral or apathetic in regard to the enjoyment of sense-objects, those barren enjoyments would get destroyed. Who would then be prepared to drudge along, without the least rest, the difficult tract in the form of the calamitous ordeal of the stay in the womb and hardship of birth and death? Besides, were such souls, strongly attached to the sense-objects, to abandon them, where would then remain any scope for the helpless great sins? And then the very word ‘earthly existence’ would lose its meaning and cease to exist. For all these reasons those that are given to pleasure and that have accepted the misery resulting from the sense-objects, have themselves secured reality for the delusive infatuation. Therefore, O Great Warrior, these sense-objects being very bad things, do not, even by mistake, be anywhere nearabout their track. Persons of ascetic inclinations avoid these sense-objects as they would avoid poison and they do not even feel any misery confronting them on account of their desirelessness.