Wave and water, the oldest non-dual image. The wave exists, but it isn't something other than the ocean. When it rises, it is water; when it falls, it is water. Shankara used this figure in 8th-century Advaita to explain the relationship between the finite self and Brahman. The self is real the way a wave is real — not non-existent, but not separate. The word "name" (nama) carries a philosophical charge here. In Hindu thought, nama-rupa, "name and form," is what seems to divide things. Strip away the name, and you see the water underneath.Shankara, Vivekachudamani, on the wave-ocean relation.
The rosary in the closing image — the worlds being told like beads — is a vivid enough picture to miss the metaphysics underneath. In Sant poetics, the rosary (mala) image encodes three moves at once: every bead is distinct, every bead is identical in material, and the string running through them is invisible. Distinct yet one yet held together by the unseen. This is precisely the structure Kabir has spent the poem building with water and wave. Qushayri's Sufi treatise uses the tasbih beads identically for the divine attributes resting in a single essence.Qushayri, Risala, on tasbih; Sant mala imagery in Adi Granth.