बाह्यस्पर्शेष्वसक्तात्मा विन्दत्यात्मनि यत्सुखम्।स ब्रह्मयोगयुक्तात्मा सुखमक्षयमश्नुते॥
bāhya-sparśeṣvasaktātmā vindatyātmani yat sukhamsa brahma-yoga-yuktātmā sukham akṣayam aśnute
Word by word
The verse says
With his self unattached to outside contacts, he finds the happiness that is in the self. His self joined to the infinite, he reaches a happiness that does not run out.
In plain words
Two kinds of happiness, told apart by where they come from.
One needs contact with something outside. One does not.
And only the second gets the word akṣaya — not running out.
Where you've felt this · with money
Your father-in-law could afford almost anything, and spends most Sundays in the same chair with the same kind of book. Nothing he buys does for him what that hour does. He worked this out about a decade ago and stopped fighting it.
Going deeper
The distinction is being drawn by mechanism rather than by moral worth, which is what makes it useful.
Happiness that depends on contact has a structure: something arrives, something registers, and then the arrangement needs repeating. Nothing about that is shameful. It is simply how a contact-based pleasure is built, and the building sets its limits.
Akṣaya — undecaying, not running out. The word is a claim about supply, not about intensity. This verse is not saying inner happiness is more thrilling. It is saying it does not deplete.
And the Gita is honest enough elsewhere not to pretend the first kind is nothing. Chapter 2 granted that the taste survives even withdrawal.
What this verse adds is a question worth asking of your own week: which of the things that made it good would still work on the fortieth repetition, and which one quietly needed to be new?