Verse 11

In plain words

I am the strength in the strong — their capability, their vigor. But it's a very particular kind of strength: one completely free of craving and clinging. Craving is wanting something you don't have yet; clinging is holding fondly onto something you do. The strength I am has nothing to do with either — it exists purely to sustain the body and keep a person alive, not to feed anyone's wanting. What I am not is the kind of strength that becomes, in an ordinary person, the very source of more craving and clinging. And there's another side to this: I am also desire itself — but only the desire that never conflicts with dharma, with what scripture actually asks of us. I mean the simple desire every living creature has for food, for drink, for the plain necessities of staying alive. That desire, Arjuna, is me.

Close to the Sanskrit

Strength, capability, vigor, of the strong, I; and that strength is devoid of desire and attachment: desire and attachment [together are] 'desire-attachment' — desire is craving toward objects not yet obtained; attachment is a lingering fondness toward objects already obtained — devoid of those two, desire and attachment, whose sole purpose is sustaining the body and the like, that strength, that vigor, I am; but not that which is the cause of craving and attachment in transmigrating beings. Moreover — not opposed to dharma, not opposed by dharma, by the purport of scripture, [is] the desire which occurs in living creatures, in beings, such as one whose purpose is mere bodily maintenance and the like, whose object is eating, drinking, and the like — that desire I am, O bull among the Bharatas.

In plain words

“Brother-in-law! Many go off into dense forests to worship Me; that is a kind of madness, a blind belief. To worship Me you need not go somewhere, to some forest or other. There is no place where I am not, and no form that is not Mine. The five elements are I Myself. Where is there a place without any element? To experience Me, who fill everything, there is no special place as such. Listen! I am the fragrance in the earth. The radiance in fire is My svarūpa. I Myself am also the living one in all beings. Not only this: I am also the strength in the strong that is free of kāma and rāga (here strength must be understood as strength of intellect). The kāma in all beings that is not contrary to Dharma is My svarūpa. There are many kinds of strength in the world: the strength of wealth, of intellect, of learning, of numbers of people, of mind, of body. All these you must regard as My strength, the strength of Me who am Parameśvara. But they must be free of kāma and rāga. Only such strengths are called svarūpas of God. Strengths joined to kāma and rāga, on the other hand, may be called beastly strength; they can never be the strength of Paśupati. Kāma means the prospect of obtaining. The longing that craves an object even when there is no sign of it to be seen, or when there is none at all, is called ‘kāma’.”

“The object one has obtained is not lasting; it perishes. Yet the insistence that it must stay firmly and forever with oneself alone is called ‘rāga’. Colouring is what is called rāga. ‘Strength’ tainted by both of these, kāma and rāga, is not God's strength. But some strengths take on worth or unworth according to the strength of their position and their own particular strength. Let us look at one example. There is wealth. Lodged with a wicked man, it becomes a cause of arrogance. Lodged with good people, it is put to use for good deeds such as acts of charity. In the same way strength, lodged with the wicked, creeps towards the oppression of others; lodged with the good, it is employed for the protection of others.”