Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 1. Janaka and the partial definitions of Brahman
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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 ear, one foot of Brahman
Whatever anyone told you, let us hear it. Gardabhivipita Bharadvaja told me that the ear indeed is Brahman. As one who had a mother, a father, and a teacher would say, so did Bharadvaja say that the ear is Brahman, for what could one have who could not hear? But did he tell you its abode and its support? He did not tell me, said Janaka. Then this is but one foot of it, O emperor. Then do tell us, Yajnavalkya. The ear itself is its abode, and the ether its support. One should meditate on it as the infinite. What is the nature of this infinitude, Yajnavalkya? They are just the quarters, O emperor, said Yajnavalkya. Therefore, O emperor, in whatever quarter one goes, one never reaches the end of it, for the quarters are infinite. The quarters, O emperor, are the ear, and the ear, O emperor, is the Supreme Brahman. The ear never deserts the one who, knowing thus, meditates upon it; all beings flock to him; becoming a god, he attains the gods. I give you a thousand cows with a bull as large as an elephant, said Janaka of Videha. Yajnavalkya replied: My father held that one should not accept a gift without having instructed.
Janaka reports that Gardabhivipita Bharadvaja taught that the ear is Brahman, because without hearing a person would have nothing. Yajnavalkya grants it as partial and completes it: the ear is its own abode, the ether is its support, and it is to be meditated on as the infinite (ananta). He explains the secret name: the infinite here is the quarters (the directions of space), because however far you travel in any direction you never reach its end, the directions being endless; and the directions are the deity of the ear. So meditated upon, the ear is the highest Brahman, never abandoning the meditator, who becomes a god and reaches the gods. Janaka offers the gift; Yajnavalkya declines for now.
In the commentaries
Sankara reads this as the ear held to be Brahman only as 'one foot,' fulfilled by its abode, support in ether, and secret name 'the infinite,' the infinitude being the endless quarters that are the ear's presiding deities, so the meditation gives its fruit as upasana and not as the limitless Brahman directly.