Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 5. Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi, again
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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 ocean where all waters meet
As the ocean is the one meeting-place of all waters, so the skin is the one meeting-place of all touches. As the ocean is the one meeting-place of all waters, so the nostrils are the one meeting-place of all smells, the tongue of all tastes, the eye of all forms, the ear of all sounds, the mind of all resolves, the heart of all knowledges, the hands of all actions, the generative organ of all delights, the organ of evacuation of all excretions, the feet of all journeys, and speech of all the Vedas.
Just as the ocean is the single point where all waters meet, so each organ is the single meeting-point of its own kind of experience: the skin for all touches, the nostrils for all smells, the tongue for all tastes, the eye for all forms, the ear for all sounds, the mind for all intentions, the heart (intellect) for all branches of knowledge, the hands for all work, the generative organ for all delights, the organ of excretion for all that is discharged, the feet for all paths, and speech for all the Vedas. As the many waters converge in the one sea, the many experiences converge in their organs, and through them in the one Self.
In the commentaries
Sankara reads the ocean as the figure of resolution: as all rivers come to rest in the sea, every class of perception and action gathers into its single organ, pointing toward the final convergence of all multiplicity in the one Self.