यथा प्रदीप्तं ज्वलनं पतङ्गा विशन्ति नाशाय समृद्धवेगाः।तथैव नाशाय विशन्ति लोका स्तवापि वक्त्राणि समृद्धवेगाः॥
yathā pradīptaṃ jvalanaṃ pataṅgāviśanti nāśāya samṛddha-vegāḥtathaiva nāśāya viśanti lokāstavāpi vaktrāṇi samṛddha-vegāḥ
Word by word
The verse says
As moths rush into a burning flame at full speed, to their destruction, so these worlds rush into your mouths at full speed, to theirs.
In plain words
Moths and a lamp. Everybody has seen it.
Samṛddha-vegāḥ — at full speed, with great eagerness. That is the detail that unsettles.
Nothing is dragging them in. They are hurrying.
Where you've felt this · in failure
You watch moths around a lamp on a verandah on a warm evening. They are not being pulled and nothing is hunting them. They go at it again and again with what looks like enthusiasm, and there is no version of the evening in which they decide to do something else.
Going deeper
The eagerness is the part of this image that does the work, and it is easy to miss because the image is so familiar.
A moth is not a victim in any ordinary sense. It is doing exactly what it most wants to do, at speed, repeatedly. Nothing coerces it. The destruction is not something that happens to it against its nature; it is what its nature produces when a flame is present.
That is a hard thing to read about human beings, and the verse makes the comparison without hedging.
What it rules out is the comfortable reading in which people are simply swept up in events beyond them. The armies on that field chose to be there. Everyone involved wanted something, and pursued it energetically, and the pursuing is what brought them. The Gita has been saying since Chapter 2 that craving is the mechanism. This is the same claim, shown rather than argued.