Upashritah — clinging to — chinta aparimeyam — anxiety beyond measure — pralaya-anta — until pralaya, until death. Kama-upabhoga-paramah — for whom kama-bhoga is the supreme goal. Etavat iti nishchitah — settled in the conviction that this is all there is.
Krishna names the asura's interior weather: an unmeasurable worry that lasts till death, anchored in the conviction that sense-pleasure is the entire purpose of life.
Shankara reads the asura, anchored in the body as sole reality, as embracing a chinta that cannot be measured — its scope is limitless because desire itself is limitless — and persists until pralaya. For them, kama-upabhoga is the supreme end: not dharma, not moksha, but taste, sound, touch exhausted to the last breath. The chinta is the natural consequence of taking the body as the whole; the etavat-iti-nishchitah is the conviction that produces it.
Madhusudana gives the richest psychological analysis: the chinta is specifically atmiya-yoga-kshema-upaya-alochana — endless strategizing about securing and protecting what is 'mine.' It is unmeasurable because the ego's proprietary sphere is in principle infinite. He cites the Charvaka sutra and gives it a sharper philosophical edge: because the asura denies any pramana beyond pratyaksha — direct perception — they cannot see beyond what their senses report. The chinta is the operational shape of that limitation.
Ramanuja reads pralaya-anta as reaching not merely personal death but cosmic dissolution — prakriti-pralaya. The asura is so invested in enjoyment that their anxious planning spans the entire present cosmic cycle. They have concluded with sanjata-nishchaya — settled conviction — that sensory delight is the highest purushartha, and that nothing beyond this exists. The bhakta watches the asura's horizon-collapse and recognizes the structural blindness.
Madhva reads the jiva in demonic mode mistaking its own enjoyment for the final cause of existence, ignoring that it is svabhavato paratantra — dependently constituted by Hari. Boundless anxiety is the inevitable fruit: a being that treats itself as the ultimate end is structurally cut off from the only source of relief. The bheda is preserved; the asura's chinta is the felt-version of the broken paratantra-recognition.
Vallabha's laconic gloss — 'kama-upabhoga eva phalam iti nishchitah' — reads as diagnostic. In pushti-marga, all bhoga properly belongs to Krishna's lila; the asura's error is not enjoying but appropriating — treating Krishna's prasada as self-generated fruit. The chinta that ends only in death is the exhaustion of one who has cut himself off from the relational source. Pushti's flow is what dissolves the chinta when grace touches the bhakta.
Shridhara explicitly names the Brihaspati-sutra that underlies the demonic worldview: 'kama eva ekah purushah-arthah' — desire alone is the human goal — and its companion: 'chaitanya-vishishtah kamah purushah' — the person is simply desire equipped with consciousness. The Charvaka-Lokayata position is the asura's settled metaphysics; the chinta is the operational consequence. The bhakta's task is to recognize the position and refuse it.