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.
The conch
As, when a conch is blown, one cannot lay hold of the sounds that go out from it, but by laying hold of the conch, or of the one who blows it, the sound is grasped.
When a conch is being blown, you cannot catch its outgoing sounds on their own; but by holding on to the conch, or the one who blows it, the sound is caught.
In the commentaries
The conch repeats the drum's lesson: grasp the source, and the modifications come with it. Sankara reads the threefold simile as unity shown within multiplicity, not multiplicity explained away.