Not that he tastes the water, but that he is the taste by which water is water.
It is easy to hear this as a poetic flourish, that God merely made these things or is praised as if he were them. What is meant is something nearer: he is the inner essence of each thing, the very property by which it is what it is.
I am the taste in water. I am the light of the moon and the sun. I am the syllable Om in all the Vedas, the sound in space, and the manhood in men.
Just before, Krishna had said the whole world is strung on him like beads on a thread, and a listener might still feel that water rests in its taste and light in the sun rather than directly in him, so here he closes that gap.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
He answers the worry left from before. Take the taste out of water and no water is left, so the taste itself, and so he, is what holds it in being.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 13 others’ words
Krishna answers a worry left over from the previous verse. He had just said that all this world is strung on him like beads on a thread. A listener might object: but water seems rooted in its taste, light in the luminaries, the Vedas in Om, not directly in you. So here Krishna closes the gap. He shows that he is the very inner essence of each thing, the property by which each thing is what it is. 'I am the taste in waters' is the model for the whole list: not 'I taste water' but 'I am the taste itself.' Take the taste out of water and no water is left; so the taste, and therefore Krishna, is what holds the water in being. The same pattern runs through light in moon and sun, the syllable Om in all the Vedas, sound in space, and manliness in men.
He is not one quality a thing happens to carry; he is its core, the savour that makes water water, the radiance by which sun and moon shine, and they rest in him.
Across Advaita, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Ramsukhdas · Bhāskara · Vedānta Deśika · RāmānujaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 11 others’ words
The key word, repeated by nearly every commentator, is 'essence.' Krishna is not naming himself as one quality among many a thing happens to have. He is the core property, the very nature, of each thing in the list: the savour that makes water water, the radiance that makes the luminaries shine, the root-syllable from which all the Veda's speech unfolds, the sound that is the proper quality of space, the manhood by which a man is recognized as a man. Several commentators add that he is also the support in which these things are 'strung' or 'woven': because he is their essence, they rest in him and could not stand apart from him. The universal is in the particulars, and the particulars hang on the universal, which is the Lord.
Read these as examples, not a closed list. He names what you can readily grasp, taste and light and sound, so you can take any plain thing as a doorway to him and worship.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, Bhedābheda, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · BhāskaraIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 11 others’ words
The list is read as a teaching aid, not a closed catalogue. The verse picks salient, familiar examples (taste, light, Om, sound, manhood) precisely because they are easy to grasp, and the same logic is meant to be 'applied everywhere.' Several commentators note that this is the opening of a series that runs across the next verses, all making the one point that the Lord is the essence-pervader of everything. And many add that the purpose is practical: this glory is taught for the sake of meditation and worship, so the seeker can take any concrete thing and use it as a doorway to the Lord who is its inner truth.
Behind the examples lies the subtle essence from which each gross thing arises and into which it dissolves; withdraw that essence he is, and the thing collapses into nothing.
Across Bhakti, Advaita, and the modern voicesŚrīdhara · Baladeva · Ramsukhdas · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · ViśvanāthaIn Śrīdhara, Baladeva, and 4 others’ words
Some commentators specify the framework behind the examples: the taste, light, and sound named here are the subtle elements (tanmatras) from which the gross elements (water, light-bearers, space) arise, abide, and into which they dissolve. Krishna is the power that is each subtle essence. So when he says 'taste in waters,' he means the rasa-tanmatra that is the cause of water; 'sound in space' means the shabda-tanmatra; 'light in moon and sun' means the radiance-power. Withdraw that subtle essence and the gross thing collapses into nothing. This makes the verse a statement of cause as much as of essence: the Lord is the causal core that sustains each level of the world.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as non-difference (abheda): the Lord is the one universal essence, and the many particulars are 'strung' or 'woven' on him as their material reality. One commentator presses the problem honestly. Normally a thread and beads, or clay and pot, are different things in a material-and-effect relation, yet the unchanging Lord seems unable to stand to the changing world that way. His answer is that the world is to be compared to a dream, to maya, to a juggler's display, or to the snake mistakenly seen in a rope: on that comparison the Lord's unchanging nature and the world's appearing are both saved. The point of the worship-language is that this teaching is given for meditation, so one should not press the individual glories too hard but use them to reach the one essence.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Here the relation is that of the inner ruler (antaryamin) and his body. All these things have arisen from the Lord, are subordinate to him, and abide in him as his body; so it is the Lord alone who abides, having them as his mode. The taste of water is not a self-standing chemical property and not a mere figure of speech; it is the Lord's presence as taste, by virtue of which the water possesses that property at all. One commentator names two misreadings this rules out: the merely metaphorical (the Lord is just praised as if he were the taste) and the merger (the taste simply is the Lord with no taste-locus left). The true middle path is that the Lord, indwelling each thing, is the essence by whose presence the outer thing has its property; the property is genuinely the thing's, but only because the Lord is in it.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator reads the verse soberly within its context. The flavor (rasa) is the essence by which the body is nourished, and in this section the Lord extols precisely those things that are the causes of the world's continuance. He distinguishes this section from the later section on divine manifestations, where excellences are taught whether or not they are causes; here the stress falls on the world-sustaining essences. Whatever is genuinely worthy of contemplation is taught, and because each item is worthy of contemplation there is no redundancy in the list.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators insist the difference between the Lord and things is preserved even here. Water, taste, and the rest do depend on the Lord and are objects of his enjoyment, but the Lord is in a special way the regulator of the natural properties such as taste, of their being essences, and of their being natural properties at all. The point of singling out 'taste in water' rather than just 'water' is threefold: the properties (taste and the like) are the non-adventitious essential natures and cores of their substances; the Lord is the special enjoyer of these essences; and these are fit images for worship, where non-difference language is normal even though real difference holds. They handle the later 'purer food' passages by saying the Lord enjoys a subtle essence beyond the reach of the embodied self's senses, so the scriptures denying that he eats refer only to gross eating, and the difference taught is a difference of persons (Lord and jiva), not merely of states. They also restrict his enjoyment to the pure: he is the 'sacred scent,' for foul scents, even if experienced, are not causes of fruit.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the chain as abheda-shruti and push it toward devotional savour. The doctrine is not that the Lord is a substrate underneath some quality residing elsewhere; rather the very taste of water, the very light of the luminaries, the very Om of the Vedas, the very sound of space, the very manhood in men is none other than Purushottama himself, become these things by his own will. One distinguishes two paths: on the maryada (rule-bound) path the Lord stands as the inner ruler, but on the pushti (grace) path he is the rasa itself, the savour and the very savouring of it together. The shruti 'he is rasa; having attained that rasa one becomes blissful' is brought to its highest application: the Lord is rasa, and tasting him is the very being of bliss for the devotee. The other develops each item as a specific bliss-contact: water's gladdening coolness, the luminaries' light, the Veda's power to awaken devotional feeling (bhava), the sound of the Lord's flute in ether, and the share of the purusha by which a person becomes fit for loving service (bhajana).
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read the chain firmly as abheda-shruti and tie it to the Lord's powers (vibhutis). 'Not I am like the taste, but I am the taste': the taste is the rasa-tanmatra by which the Lord supports the waters and abides in them, without which they could not subsist; likewise light, Om as the root of all the Vedas in their uttered form, the sound-essence of space, and manhood as fruitful effort, for on effort men stand. One gives the vivid image: gems are not the thread, but the thread is in the gems, and that thread is Vasudeva. One frames it as the Lord entering his own effect as inner controller, abiding sometimes as cause and sometimes as the very essence of effects like human beings. The Marathi voice gathers the whole list and closes that, through all these differing creatures and their differing ways of living, he dwells as the one abiding Self, identical in unity of being.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator reads each item as the undivided, common ground that lies before particular differences break out. The taste he is, is the taste tasted everywhere, the common savour in which the distinction of sweet, sour, and the rest has not yet arisen. The light he is, is free of softness and fierceness. Most strikingly, on 'sound in space' he offers a yogic reading: beyond ordinary sound, which is a quality of ether produced by striking bodies, there is the sound arising from the ether-quality alone, free of any apparatus of striking, to be known by yogins who with attentive heart move in the ether of the cave of Brahman, the unstruck sound (anahata) that follows along the whole body of the Veda. That, he says, is the very truth of the Blessed One. And manhood is the splendour by which one is acknowledged everywhere as 'this is a man.'
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators present the verse plainly, mostly without sectarian machinery. One renders it directly: in the Lord as sapidity the water is woven, as light the sun and moon, as Om all the Vedas, as virility all men, with the whole world woven into him as cloth into the warp. Another develops it experientially: once you accept that the Lord is the cause of everything seen, heard, held, and known, and that nothing has independent existence apart from him, then a natural taste for him arises and his worship begins of itself, just as a greedy man's taste turns naturally to money once he treats money as the highest thing. He unpacks the tanmatra logic concretely: water is born from, abides in, and dissolves into the rasa-tanmatra, and that rasa is the Lord himself; the same for the light-power of moon and sun born of the rupa-tanmatra.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Take this verse as an invitation, not a doctrine to memorize. The next time you drink water, notice that what you actually taste, the savour itself, is being called the Lord. The next time you stand in sunlight, the light reaching you is being called the Lord. The teaching here is that once you truly accept that everything you see, hear, hold, and know has no standing of its own apart from him, a taste for him begins to arise on its own, the way a person who treats money as the highest thing finds desire for it springing up naturally. You do not have to force devotion. You let the ordinary world become the place where you meet him, and the worship starts to happen by itself.
The next time you drink water or stand in sunlight, let the savour and the light be where you meet him, and a quiet taste for him will begin to rise on its own.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rishna answers a worry left over from the previous verse. He had just said that all this world is strung on him like beads on a thread. A listener might object: but water seems rooted in its taste, light in the luminaries, the Vedas in Om, not directly in you. So here Krishna closes the gap. He shows that he is the very inner essence of each thing, the property by which each thing is what it is. 'I am the taste in waters' is the model for the whole list: not 'I taste water' but 'I am the taste itself.' Take the taste out of water and no water is left; so the taste, and therefore Krishna, is what holds the water in being. The same pattern runs through light in moon and sun, the syllable Om in all the Vedas, sound in space, and manliness in men.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
The key word, repeated by nearly every commentator, is 'essence.' Krishna is not naming himself as one quality among many a thing happens to have. He is the core property, the very nature, of each thing in the list: the savour that makes water water, the radiance that makes the luminaries shine, the root-syllable from which all the Veda's speech unfolds, the sound that is the proper quality of space, the manhood by which a man is recognized as a man. Several commentators add that he is also the support in which these things are 'strung' or 'woven': because he is their essence, they rest in him and could not stand apart from him. The universal is in the particulars, and the particulars hang on the universal, which is the Lord.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara · Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya
The list is read as a teaching aid, not a closed catalogue. The verse picks salient, familiar examples (taste, light, Om, sound, manhood) precisely because they are easy to grasp, and the same logic is meant to be 'applied everywhere.' Several commentators note that this is the opening of a series that runs across the next verses, all making the one point that the Lord is the essence-pervader of everything. And many add that the purpose is practical: this glory is taught for the sake of meditation and worship, so the seeker can take any concrete thing and use it as a doorway to the Lord who is its inner truth.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara
Some commentators specify the framework behind the examples: the taste, light, and sound named here are the subtle elements (tanmatras) from which the gross elements (water, light-bearers, space) arise, abide, and into which they dissolve. Krishna is the power that is each subtle essence. So when he says 'taste in waters,' he means the rasa-tanmatra that is the cause of water; 'sound in space' means the shabda-tanmatra; 'light in moon and sun' means the radiance-power. Withdraw that subtle essence and the gross thing collapses into nothing. This makes the verse a statement of cause as much as of essence: the Lord is the causal core that sustains each level of the world.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Viśvanātha
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as non-difference (abheda): the Lord is the one universal essence, and the many particulars are 'strung' or 'woven' on him as their material reality. One commentator presses the problem honestly. Normally a thread and beads, or clay and pot, are different things in a material-and-effect relation, yet the unchanging Lord seems unable to stand to the changing world that way. His answer is that the world is to be compared to a dream, to maya, to a juggler's display, or to the snake mistakenly seen in a rope: on that comparison the Lord's unchanging nature and the world's appearing are both saved. The point of the worship-language is that this teaching is given for meditation, so one should not press the individual glories too hard but use them to reach the one essence.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the relation is that of the inner ruler (antaryamin) and his body. All these things have arisen from the Lord, are subordinate to him, and abide in him as his body; so it is the Lord alone who abides, having them as his mode. The taste of water is not a self-standing chemical property and not a mere figure of speech; it is the Lord's presence as taste, by virtue of which the water possesses that property at all. One commentator names two misreadings this rules out: the merely metaphorical (the Lord is just praised as if he were the taste) and the merger (the taste simply is the Lord with no taste-locus left). The true middle path is that the Lord, indwelling each thing, is the essence by whose presence the outer thing has its property; the property is genuinely the thing's, but only because the Lord is in it.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator reads the verse soberly within its context. The flavor (rasa) is the essence by which the body is nourished, and in this section the Lord extols precisely those things that are the causes of the world's continuance. He distinguishes this section from the later section on divine manifestations, where excellences are taught whether or not they are causes; here the stress falls on the world-sustaining essences. Whatever is genuinely worthy of contemplation is taught, and because each item is worthy of contemplation there is no redundancy in the list.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators insist the difference between the Lord and things is preserved even here. Water, taste, and the rest do depend on the Lord and are objects of his enjoyment, but the Lord is in a special way the regulator of the natural properties such as taste, of their being essences, and of their being natural properties at all. The point of singling out 'taste in water' rather than just 'water' is threefold: the properties (taste and the like) are the non-adventitious essential natures and cores of their substances; the Lord is the special enjoyer of these essences; and these are fit images for worship, where non-difference language is normal even though real difference holds. They handle the later 'purer food' passages by saying the Lord enjoys a subtle essence beyond the reach of the embodied self's senses, so the scriptures denying that he eats refer only to gross eating, and the difference taught is a difference of persons (Lord and jiva), not merely of states. They also restrict his enjoyment to the pure: he is the 'sacred scent,' for foul scents, even if experienced, are not causes of fruit.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the chain as abheda-shruti and push it toward devotional savour. The doctrine is not that the Lord is a substrate underneath some quality residing elsewhere; rather the very taste of water, the very light of the luminaries, the very Om of the Vedas, the very sound of space, the very manhood in men is none other than Purushottama himself, become these things by his own will. One distinguishes two paths: on the maryada (rule-bound) path the Lord stands as the inner ruler, but on the pushti (grace) path he is the rasa itself, the savour and the very savouring of it together. The shruti 'he is rasa; having attained that rasa one becomes blissful' is brought to its highest application: the Lord is rasa, and tasting him is the very being of bliss for the devotee. The other develops each item as a specific bliss-contact: water's gladdening coolness, the luminaries' light, the Veda's power to awaken devotional feeling (bhava), the sound of the Lord's flute in ether, and the share of the purusha by which a person becomes fit for loving service (bhajana).
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators read the chain firmly as abheda-shruti and tie it to the Lord's powers (vibhutis). 'Not I am like the taste, but I am the taste': the taste is the rasa-tanmatra by which the Lord supports the waters and abides in them, without which they could not subsist; likewise light, Om as the root of all the Vedas in their uttered form, the sound-essence of space, and manhood as fruitful effort, for on effort men stand. One gives the vivid image: gems are not the thread, but the thread is in the gems, and that thread is Vasudeva. One frames it as the Lord entering his own effect as inner controller, abiding sometimes as cause and sometimes as the very essence of effects like human beings. The Marathi voice gathers the whole list and closes that, through all these differing creatures and their differing ways of living, he dwells as the one abiding Self, identical in unity of being.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads each item as the undivided, common ground that lies before particular differences break out. The taste he is, is the taste tasted everywhere, the common savour in which the distinction of sweet, sour, and the rest has not yet arisen. The light he is, is free of softness and fierceness. Most strikingly, on 'sound in space' he offers a yogic reading: beyond ordinary sound, which is a quality of ether produced by striking bodies, there is the sound arising from the ether-quality alone, free of any apparatus of striking, to be known by yogins who with attentive heart move in the ether of the cave of Brahman, the unstruck sound (anahata) that follows along the whole body of the Veda. That, he says, is the very truth of the Blessed One. And manhood is the splendour by which one is acknowledged everywhere as 'this is a man.'
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
These commentators present the verse plainly, mostly without sectarian machinery. One renders it directly: in the Lord as sapidity the water is woven, as light the sun and moon, as Om all the Vedas, as virility all men, with the whole world woven into him as cloth into the warp. Another develops it experientially: once you accept that the Lord is the cause of everything seen, heard, held, and known, and that nothing has independent existence apart from him, then a natural taste for him arises and his worship begins of itself, just as a greedy man's taste turns naturally to money once he treats money as the highest thing. He unpacks the tanmatra logic concretely: water is born from, abides in, and dissolves into the rasa-tanmatra, and that rasa is the Lord himself; the same for the light-power of moon and sun born of the rupa-tanmatra.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If God is the very taste of water and the strength in me, am I really meeting God in every ordinary thing, or is this just a poetic way of saying he made everything?
It is meant literally, not as decoration. The verse deliberately avoids saying 'I am like the taste' and says 'I am the taste.' The taste is not a quality sitting somewhere else that merely points back to God; it is his actual presence as the essence of the water. Draw the taste out and no water remains, which is the verse's way of saying the Lord is what holds the water in being.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śaṅkarācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya · Rāmānujācārya
At the same time it is not a flat identity that erases the water or the taste. The most careful reading names two errors to avoid: treating it as mere praise (so God is only figuratively the taste) and treating it as merger (so the taste just is God and there is no real taste left). The truth in the middle is that God, dwelling inside the thing, is the essence by whose presence the thing has its property. The taste is genuinely the water's, but only because he is in it.
Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya
So yes, you can meet him in ordinary things, and that is exactly the point of giving such everyday examples. The list is chosen for things you can readily grasp, and the same logic applies everywhere, taught for the sake of meditation and worship. Some commentators take this furthest: on the path of grace the Lord is the savour itself and the very savouring of it, so that tasting him becomes the seeker's own bliss.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya
Contemplation
Take this verse as an invitation, not a doctrine to memorize. The next time you drink water, notice that what you actually taste, the savour itself, is being called the Lord. The next time you stand in sunlight, the light reaching you is being called the Lord. The teaching here is that once you truly accept that everything you see, hear, hold, and know has no standing of its own apart from him, a taste for him begins to arise on its own, the way a person who treats money as the highest thing finds desire for it springing up naturally. You do not have to force devotion. You let the ordinary world become the place where you meet him, and the worship starts to happen by itself.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.