सुखं त्विदानीं त्रिविधं शृणु मे भरतर्षभ ।अभ्यासाद्रमते यत्र दुःखान्तं च निगच्छति॥
sukhaṃ tv idānīṃ tri-vidhaṃ śṛṇu me bharatarṣabhaabhyāsād ramate yatra duḥkhāntaṃ ca nigacchatiyat tad agre viṣam iva pariṇāme ‘mṛtopamamtat sukhaṃ sāttvikaṃ proktam ātma-buddhi-prasāda-jam
Word by word
The verse says
Now hear from me about the three kinds of happiness, best of the Bharatas. The one you come to enjoy through practice, and which brings suffering to an end.
In plain words
Happiness gets the same treatment, and the first thing said about the good kind is startling.
You come to enjoy it abhyāsāt - through practice. It is not immediately enjoyable. The enjoyment is acquired.
That is not how anybody talks about happiness. We treat it as the thing that is pleasant by definition. Here it is something you have to learn to like.
Where you've felt this · in growing older
Your grandmother started reading at sixty-four, having not read a book since school. The first one took her five weeks and she did not enjoy it much. She is seventy-nine now and reads most evenings, and she would tell you it is the best part of her day. The books did not get easier.
Going deeper
Happiness that has to be practised before it is pleasant is a genuinely unusual claim and it undercuts how most of us choose things.
We select by immediate response. Try it, notice whether it feels good, do more of what felt good. That method is reliable for food and disastrous for a life, because it systematically excludes everything with a delay built in.
The phrase about suffering coming to an end is the other half. This is not a happiness that sits on top of your life while the trouble continues underneath. It is described as the trouble actually finishing.
And the practical consequence is worth taking seriously at any age. The things most likely to be worth doing are the ones that will not feel like much the first eight times, which means your initial reaction is close to useless as a guide.