As the wind rests in space, all beings rest in him, and he stays untouched.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the wind-in-space image to teach that the relation of beings to the Lord is one of no real contact at all. Beings abide in the all-pervading Self exactly as wind abides in space: 'by no contact whatsoever.' Some press this further into the question of what kind of relation could even connect Brahman and the world, and argue that none of the ordinary connections work, since Brahman is infinite, partless, and pure Being-Consciousness-Bliss while the elements are finite and insentient. The conclusion drawn is that the world's relation to Brahman is only a superimposed, name-only relation: the world does not truly dwell in Brahman as a separate reality. Some take the image still deeper, reading the wind as the cosmic thread-Self (sutra-atma) and the 'beings' as the individual conscious selves, and using the standard figure of the pot-space and the great space: just as the space inside a pot is never really different from the universal space, so the individual self is non-different from the supreme Brahman through all three times. On this reading the verse finally teaches the non-difference of the individual self and Brahman, the earlier line 'Brahman is the jiva' being explained here.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the image to teach total dependence on the Lord as the one upholder, not non-difference. The point is that the wind, though it seems to stand and move on its own, is in fact supportless apart from the Lord; it must be admitted to depend on him and to be upheld by him alone. Scripture is cited to show that all the great workings of nature, the clouds, the moon's waxing, the sun's course, the very blowing of the wind, are the wonders of Vishnu and happen by his rule, 'from fear of Him the wind blows, from fear the sun rises.' One of these commentators is careful about the simile itself: the cruder picture of a vessel containing its contents could mislead, so Krishna deliberately chose the space-and-wind image, where the ground (space) is in no way moved or transformed by what moves within it. The Lord likewise contains beings and is the ground in which they act, yet is never altered by their activity. The standing, activity, origination, and dissolution of all things all flow from the Lord's resolve alone, who needs nothing else.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads beings as abiding in the Lord not by conjunction but by being held: the Lord, pervasive and become their support, is the one within whom beings 'of slight measure' move about. The wind is the subtle air pervading the three worlds, and its abiding in pervasive space pictures how beings subsist within the all-pervading Lord. This commentator also reads the verse as the teaching on the state of subsistence specifically, and immediately turns to the next verse for the matching teaching on dissolution, where beings return to the Lord's material nature at a cosmic age's close and are sent forth again at its beginning.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators read the image very tightly to make one point: things can abide in something without any transference of qualities. The whole reason for giving an illustration at all, one of them notes, is that resting-in by itself is unremarkable; what needs proof is that beings rest in the Lord 'and yet do not,' meaning without any mutual exchange of attributes. The wind shows this exactly: though it abides in space, it does not impart touch and the other qualities to space. So beings abide in the Lord without their qualities passing over to him and altering him. There is no move here toward identity; the abiding keeps the two distinct, the supported genuinely other than the support.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read support-without-binding as resting finally on the Lord's own power and will. The wind has space as its eternal support because it has nowhere else to abide, yet it does not bind itself to space, since space being partless allows no real binding. In the same way beings stand in the Lord without being fused to him. But the deeper truth one of them adds is that even the great elements, space itself included, are upheld solely by the Lord's supporting power (shakti); in the form of the imperishable (akshara) the whole is sustained by him alone, as scripture says the sun and moon, heaven and earth, stand sustained under the imperishable's governance. The other stresses that beings, though running everywhere of their own, stand in the Lord 'by my very will of play': it is his playful will, his lila, that holds them. The closing word is read as 'hold this near at heart,' take it as near to me and so behold it.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the briefest gloss, fixing on the single decisive feature of the simile: though there is an unfailing, never-broken connection between space and the wind, the ether is never spoken of as a thing that gets touched. The connection is real and constant, yet the ground itself remains untouched, the point the verse turns on.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators agree that the image shows pervasion without grasp, support without joining, but they develop it in distinct ways. One states it plainly: because nothing can stand without space to occupy, the wind, though vast and everywhere, abides ever in space yet is never joined to it, space being partless; the example is exact, pervasion without grasp. Another deepens the mutuality and then guards the Lord's uniqueness: not only does the wind rest in space without resting (because space is unattached), but space too rests in the wind without resting; yet the non-attachment of inert space is merely the non-attachment of a dull thing, whereas a conscious being that is at once the support and supporter of the world exists nowhere but in the Supreme Lord, so the inconceivable power and majesty Krishna had claimed is indeed established, the space-image serving only to admit the matter into ordinary understanding. A third reads the whole through the Lord's will: in the great unsupported sky the great unsupported wind abides and moves, and its very existence and activity, despite being unsupported, proceed from the Lord's will alone, as the inner-controller scripture and 'out of fear of him the wind blows' show; so all beings, fixed and moving, are held by his mere will and ever sustained, for otherwise the sky and the rest would fall away. The Marathi voice turns it devotionally: the air and the sky are as one until the air is made to move, and just so beings appear in the Lord only as imagination (Phantasy) pictures them; drop that imagination and the beings melt away and nothing remains but the pure Divine Self, for it is primal nature (Maya) that makes and breaks all beings.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators read the verse as resolving an apparent contradiction and as opening the theme of how the universe issues from the Lord. One treats the wind-in-space picture as showing how the Supreme can be both quality-less and quality-full at once; the 'yoga' that turns the imperceptible into the perceptible is nothing but Maya, very easy for the Lord, who is therefore called Lord of Yoga, and the verse leads into the description of how the world's transformations are carried on by that power. The other, a non-sectarian devotional voice, presses the inseparability hardest: the wind is sometimes still, sometimes mild, sometimes rushing, yet in every mode never separable from space, for the wind is space's effect (karya) and an effect has no being apart from its cause (karana); from the effect-side it seems distinct, but in truth it has no separate existence. So too the individual self manifests from, abides in, and dissolves into the Supreme, and has no independent existence of its own; only the Supreme is. The wind roams everywhere, but the self does not really move; it only seems to move because it has taken the body's motion as its own, while in truth it is ever still in the Supreme. The practical upshot offered is that beings can never leave the Lord and go anywhere, in creation or dissolution alike, and holding this firmly turns one away from clinging to perishable nature toward the experience of the real.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas