What the Bhagavad Gita says about desire
The Gita is not against wanting things. 7.11 has Krishna say he is desire itself when it does not conflict with what is right, which is not the line a text hostile to appetite would write.
What it objects to is a particular shape. 16.10 names it precisely: duṣpūra, hard to fill, a jar with a hole in it. Ordinary desire has an end. You want a thing, you get it, the wanting stops. The kind the book warns about has no end, because the object is standing in for something else. Someone chasing money is usually chasing the feeling of finally being safe, and money cannot deliver that, so no amount is the right amount.
2.70 gives the image for the alternative, and it is not a dry one. The person at peace is like the ocean, which rivers pour into constantly and which stays level. Things still arrive. Nothing about the sea has to be defended for that to be true.
The verses 18
2.43
Their hearts are set on what they want.
2.55
Krishna said: When a person lets go of every craving that comes into the mind, and is content in himself with himself alone, then his understanding has settled.
2.62
Dwell on a thing and you start to hold on to it.
2.70
Rivers pour into the ocean and the ocean stays where it is, filled and unmoved.
2.71
The person who gives up wanting and goes about without craving, without "mine", without "I am the one" - that person comes to peace.
3.37
Krishna said: It is wanting.
3.39
Knowing is covered over by this constant enemy of the wise, Arjuna - a fire in the shape of wanting, and it never fills up.
3.40
The senses, the mind and the understanding are where it lives.
3.41
So get the senses in hand first, Arjuna, and then strike this thing down - the harm-doer that destroys both knowing and seeing.
3.43
Knowing him to be above the understanding, steady yourself by yourself, and strike down the enemy in the shape of wanting - the one that is so hard to get at.
5.23
Whoever can bear, here and now, before letting go of the body, the force that rises from wanting and anger - he is joined, and he is a happy man.
6.24
Setting down completely, leaving nothing over, all the desires born of plans, and holding in the whole crowd of the senses with the mind, from every side…
7.11
I am the strength of the strong, free of craving and heat.
16.10
They take shelter in a wanting that cannot be filled, full of pretence and pride and swagger.
16.11
They give themselves to worry without measure, worry that ends only when they do, certain that getting what they want is the highest thing and that this is all there is.
16.12
Tied up in a hundred ropes of hope, given over to wanting and anger, they work to pile up money by crooked means, for the sake of getting what they want.
16.21
Three gates open on that ruin, and they destroy a person: wanting, anger, greed.
18.53
Freed from self-importance, force, swagger, wanting, anger and holding on to things, without any sense of mine, at peace: such a person is ready to become the absolute.