Vishaya-indriya-samyogat — from sense-object contact. Yat tat agre amrita-upamam — what is at the start nectar-like. Parinaame visham iva — at maturation poison-like. Tat sukham rajasam smritam.
Krishna names rajasika sukha as the inverse temporal signature of sattvika: nectar-first, poison-later. The pleasure of sense-contact is real; its terminal cost is also real.
Shankara reads rajasika pleasure born of indriya-vishaya contact as seeming amrita-like at the first moment but in parinama becoming visha-like — for it destroys strength, vitality, intelligence, wealth, and leads through adharma to hell and suffering. The senses are instruments structurally unsuited to deliver lasting joy; the chapter's diagnostic shows the rajasika sukha trajectory across time.
Madhusudana reads pleasure born not from atma-buddhi-clarity but from sense-organ-object contact — the well-known joy of garlands, sandal-paste, the company of women — srak-chandana-vanita — seems like nectar at its very beginning, when the labor of mental discipline is absent. But in ripening it brings suffering both in this life and beyond — aihika and amushmika. The temporal pattern is opposite to sattvika; the chapter's diagnostic uses time-trajectory to identify the type.
Ramanuja reads at the moment of anubhava — experience — pleasure born of vishaya-indriya-samyoga appearing like nectar; but when that pleasure matures and the hunger that was its occasion subsides, and when it becomes the cause of hell and worse, it is as though one has drunk poison.
Bhagavan's bhakta recognizes this inversion and turns from sense-pleasure toward kainkarya. The bhakti-frame's diagnostic operates through the consequence-recognition.
Madhva reads vishaya-indriya-samyoga generating a pleasure that, at its arising, resembles nectar — agre amrita-upamam — yet in its parinama is visham iva. The jiva, paratantra under svatantra Hari, is drawn by rajas's fruit-promise; the chapter's verse names the bait-and-switch precisely. The bheda-frame: the pleasure is real, the suffering is real, the inversion is real; the bhakta's discrimination must reach into the parinama.
Vallabha reads pleasure arising from rupa-and-other-sense-objects-through-senses as agre amrita-upama; in vipaka it is visha — full of suffering. The Vallabha tradition reads this as Krishna describing what lies outside pushti-marga: the rajasika soul mistakes sense-pleasure for the ananda Krishna alone gives. The pushti-marga reading: when prasada is refused, the bhakta's joy-receiver is colonized by rajasika substitutes; the chapter's diagnostic alerts the seeker to the substitution.
Shridhara reads rajasika pleasure as the well-known joy of union with women and similar sense-contacts, whose initial experience is amrita-like at the prathama agre. At parinama it is visha-tulya — equal to poison — since it is the cause of suffering both iha and amutra. The bhakta who knows this turns from sense-pleasure permanently. The chapter's middle-sukha-mode is named with operational precision.