Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 2, Brahmana 5. The honey: the Self shining in all beings
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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.
Earth is honey to all beings
This earth is honey to all beings, and all beings are honey to this earth. The shining, immortal person who is in this earth, and the shining, immortal person who in the body is the bodily self: this very one is that which is this Self. This is the immortal, this is Brahman, this is the All.
The earth and all beings nourish one another; each is sweetness (madhu) to the other. The radiant, deathless person dwelling in the earth and the radiant, deathless person dwelling in the body are one and the same, and that one is the Self (atman). That Self is the immortal, is Brahman, is everything that is.
madhu-vidyā
the honey doctrine. The teaching that each being is the honey of all and all are its honey, the one shining Self met in every element and in the body alike.
In the commentaries
Sankara opens the honey doctrine (madhu-vidya) by reading madhu, honey, not as sweetness but as mutual effect and mutual helpfulness. Just as the honey in a comb is made by many bees and in turn nourishes them all, so the earth is the product and support of all beings, and all beings are the product and support of the earth, each made of the other, each sustaining the other. Because things stand in this mutual making, he argues, they share one origin, one genus, and one dissolution, which points back to a single source. And in the earth, and within the body that answers to it, there shines one luminous immortal person, named here under two aspects yet not two: this is the thread he will draw through every pair.