अजोऽपि सन्नव्ययात्मा भूतानामीश्वरोऽपि सन्।प्रकृतिं स्वामधिष्ठाय संभवाम्यात्ममायया॥
ajo ’pi sannavyayātmā bhūtānām īśvaro ’pi sanprakṛtiṃ svām adhiṣṭhāya sambhavāmyātma-māyayā
Word by word
The verse says
Though I am unborn and do not decay, though I am the lord of what exists — I take up my own nature and come into being by my own power.
In plain words
Three concessions and then a contradiction, held in one line.
Unborn. Undecaying. Lord of beings. And then: sambhavāmi — I come into being.
Krishna is not resolving the tension. He is stating both halves.
Where you've felt this · in health
A doctor who has had the illness. Nothing about their training changed. Everything about how they sit in the room did.
Going deeper
Ātma-māyayā — by my own māyā. This is the word that does the work, and it is one of the most misread words in Indian thought.
Māyā is usually rendered illusion, which pulls this verse toward a docetic reading: Krishna only appears to be born, and the body is a kind of stage costume. Some traditions do read it that way.
But māyā more basically means the power to bring something about — the making-power, the art by which appearance is produced. On that reading he is not pretending to be born. He is doing something, using a capacity that is his.
The traditions split here and the split matters. If the birth is only apparent, the avatāra is a display. If it is real, something genuinely enters the conditions it came to change.
This edition does not resolve it, because the word supports both and the difference is doctrinally live. What both readings share is the structure: what is unconditioned takes on conditions deliberately, and prakṛtiṁ svām adhiṣṭhāya — standing on its own nature — suggests something occupied rather than faked.