Yat sukham mohanam atmanah — what happiness deluding the self. Agre cha anubandhe cha — at the start and the end. Nidra-alasya-pramada-uttham — arising from sleep, sloth, heedlessness. Tat tamasam udahritam.
Krishna names tamasika sukha by its temporal signature: deluding throughout. Neither the rajasika promising-then-bitter nor the sattvika bitter-then-rewarding. Just dulling, beginning to end. The source: nidra, alasya, pramada.
Shankara reads tamasika pleasure as deluding the atman both at the outset and aftermath, arising from nidra, alasya, pramada. He identifies mohanata as the defining mark: unlike sattvika pleasure that clarifies the buddhi, this pleasure actively obscures the discriminative faculty. The temporal pattern: not bitter-then-sweet, not sweet-then-bitter, just consistently fogged. The chapter's tamasika-sukha-marker is delusion across the full duration.
Madhusudana fuses Shankara's analytical precision with devotional warmth: tamasika pleasure deludes the self both at pratha-arambhe and parinaame, arising from sleep, sloth, pramada — where pramada is manorajya-matra, mere fantasy, devoid of the buddhi-prasada that characterizes sattvika pleasure. The whole architecture of mind-discipline is missing; the pleasure is what fills the absence with delusion.
Ramanuja reads pleasure obscuring yathavasthitavastu-aprakasha — the non-illumination of reality as it is — both in the moment of experience and ripening as tamasika. Moha here means not mere confusion but the positive failure of the antahkarana to present Bhagavan's creation as it truly is. Sloth dulls the senses, and dull senses produce tamasika sukha. The bhakti-frame: the pleasure that hides Bhagavan from the bhakta is the worst of all pleasures, regardless of its surface character.
Madhva reads tamasika pleasure deluding the jiva both at agre and anubandhe, springing from nidra, alasya, pramada. For the paratantra-jiva, such pleasure is doubly treacherous: it blunts the discriminative awareness by which the jiva would recognize svatantra Hari and its dependent place. The bheda-frame's tamasika-diagnostic: relational dulling at every moment.
Vallabha reads pleasure deluded the self both at onset and end as tamasika, and Vallabha's terse gloss drives straight to the practical conclusion: the mumukshu must suppress rajas and tamas entirely and take up sattva alone. For pushti-marga, tamasika pleasure is the farthest remove from Bhagavan's grace — it is pleasure that keeps the bhakta from feeling the prasada-flow at all.
Shridhara reads tamasika pleasure as that which deludes the self — both in the prathama-kshana and what follows — arising from sleep, sloth, pramada. Pramada is the state of manorajya — mental fantasy — born of inattention to what should be done — kartavya-artha-avadhana-rahitya.
Shridhara's precision: pramada is not mere laziness but active misdirection of attention. The chapter's tamasika-sukha is named with operational specificity.