किरीटिनं गदिनं चक्रिणं च तेजोराशिं सर्वतोदीप्तिमन्तम्।पश्यामि त्वां दुर्निरीक्ष्यं समन्ता द्दीप्तानलार्कद्युतिमप्रमेयम्॥
kirīṭinaṃ gadinaṃ cakriṇaṃ catejo-rāśiṃ sarvato dīptimantampaśyāmi tvāṃ durnirīkṣyaṃ samantāddīptānalārka-dyutim aprameyam
Word by word
The verse says
I see you crowned, with mace and discus, a mass of brightness blazing on every side. I can hardly look at you — glowing like fire, like the sun, past all measure.
In plain words
Durnirīkṣyam — hard to look at. Painful to the eye.
This is the first time seeing is described as difficult rather than wonderful.
He was given a divine eye in order to see this, and even with it, he is flinching.
Where you've felt this · at work
Somebody is welding in a workshop and you glance over without thinking. The light is not bright the way a lamp is bright. It is a kind of white that your eye refuses, and you look away before you have decided to, with the shape of it still printed on your vision.
Going deeper
Being unable to look at something you were specifically equipped to look at is where this chapter starts to turn.
The divine eye was given four verses ago. It has done its job — he is seeing. What was not promised, and does not follow, is that seeing would be comfortable. The equipment makes the vision possible; it does not make it survivable.
That distinction is the reason the chapter gets frightening while nothing has gone wrong.
It also quietly corrects a common hope about spiritual experience: that if you were only able to perceive more, you would feel better. Nothing here supports that. Arjuna is perceiving exactly what he asked to perceive, with the faculty he was given for it, and the immediate result is that he cannot keep his eyes on it.