THE NEGATIVE THEOLOGY OF YOGAVASISTHA AND LANKAVATARA SUTRA
Keywords:
YOGAVASISTHA, LANKAVATARA SUTRA, NEGATIVE THEOLOGYAbstract
The way of negation is not unfamiliar to students and scholars of Indian thought. The practice of neti neti in the Advaita Vedanta tradition serves as a means to negate all that is not Brahman. Within the Yoga tradition the definition of yoga is essentially negative, requiring the prevention of the modification of consciousness (citta vrtti nirodha), as is the practice of yoga as given in the ascending stages of samãdhi. The Mãdhyamika dialectic, introduced by Nãgärjuna, presents a fourfold negation of all that is held to exist and even negates its negation. As early as the Chãndogya the story of Svetaketu and his father Uddãlaka Aruni provides examples of a way of negation, particularly the dissection of a fig down to its invisible and indivisible " essence ' In each of these practices, the method is clearly negative : the absolute of each system is spoken in terms of what it is not. Each systematically denies all that is represented by language until the silence of the absolute is found.
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