Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 4. Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi: for the sake of the Self
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
Breathed forth like smoke
As from a fire kindled with damp wood the clouds of smoke pour forth on every side, so from this great Being has been breathed out all this: the Rgveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, the hymns of the Atharvans and Angirases, history and ancient lore, the sciences, the upanisads, the verses, the aphorisms, the elucidations and the commentaries. From this very Being were all these breathed out.
As thick smoke billows out in every direction from a fire of damp wood, so from this great Being (the Self) all these are breathed out: the Rg, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva Vedas, history (itihasa) and ancient lore (purana), the sciences, the upanisads, the verses, the aphorisms (sutra), the explanations and the commentaries. All of them come forth from It.
In the commentaries
As smoke rises of itself from a fire of damp wood, the Vedas and all lore are breathed out from the great Being without effort and without an author. Sankara takes this to ground their standing authority: they issue from the omniscient cause as a person's own breath, needing no further proof behind them, and they show the Self as the all-knowing source.