Abstract
The negative way that we discuss here is apophatism or via negativa which has a long history. In this chapter we look at the concept implying the negative way in the two traditions, namely, the Buddhist and the Christian. The negative way is called śūnyatā in Buddhism, and it is via negativa or apophatism in the Christian tradition, though the implication in both the traditions would vary. The import of these terms is indeed the negative way, but they operate in different nuances in both these traditions. The Buddhist notion of śūnyatā does not have anything to do with the theistic understanding of the ineffability of God. In the Christian tradition, the negative way comes to play a role in knowing God, a knowing in unknowing, whereas in the Buddhist parlance, śūnyatā is an operator; it is a device or stratagem that calls for an avoidance or ‘cessation of hypostatization’ with regard to what is purportedly real and purportedly unreal. In this chapter, we first look at the Buddhist tradition and the negative way found therein, highlighting the Mahāyāna tradition first, then, taking up the Mādhyamika system of Nāgārjuna and the concept of śūnyatā. In the latter part of the chapter, we make a brief account of the trajectory of the negative way in the Christian tradition up to John of the Cross, starting with ‘Christian orient and the negative way’ and then proceeding to Neoplatonism and Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas, Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart and The Cloud of Unknowing.
Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone.(Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ, p. 90)
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Notes
- 1.
Satkari Mookerjee explains this: ‘The fact of the matter is that both the speaker and the hearer apprehend in fact and reality a mental image, a subjective content and not any objective fact; but the speaker thinks that he presents an objective fact to the hearer and the hearer too is deluded into thinking that the presented meaning is not a mental image, but an objective verity. The speaker and the hearer are both laboring under a common delusion’ (Mookerjee 2006: 116).
- 2.
It could be further clarified with the explanation of negative constituent, while dealing with ‘exclusion’ (apoha) in one of the recent studies that takes recourse to the late Indian Buddhist philosopher Jñānaśrīmitra (972–1025 AD). It goes like this: ‘…the content of our verbal (and also inferential and conceptual) awareness must be taken to be a complex object consisting of both a positive and a negative element. In accordance with our everyday linguistic experiences, a positive object must be taken to be what is primarily expressed by language. But an additional negative element, exclusion, must be taken to be a qualifier of that positive object. While we can act only towards positive entities, it is only through exclusion that we can pick out the appropriate objects for that activity by distinguishing them from those that are inappropriate’ (McCrea and Patil 2010: 28).
- 3.
Arthur Bradley, taking recourse to Louth (1980), Mortley (1986), McGinn (1991) and Bulhoff and ten Kate (2000) defines via negativa in this way: ‘The negative way names a theological tradition that insists that the divine cannot be understood in human terms because it is radically transcendent. This leads to the via negativa to approach the divine not by positive or anthropomorphic language but by negative language, by paradoxical or contradictory language, or by insisting on the inadequacy of all language describe His transcendence. In simple terms, then negative theology is a theology that says what God is not rather than what He is; that insists on His radical otherness from all human images and irreducibility to human thought’ (Bradley 2004: 12).
- 4.
Entréme donde no supe, Y quedéme no sabiendo, Toda ciencia transcendiendo (St John of the Cross, ‘Stanzas concerning an Ecstasy experienced in high Contemplation’ (Kavanaugh 1991: 53)
- 5.
The Cūḷa-Māluṅkyasutta of Majjhima Nikāya is the classical example to it (Majhima Nikāya I, 426–432: Vol. II, 97–101). ‘Wherefore, Māluṅkyaputta, understand as not explained what has not been explained by me’ (Majjhima Nikāya I, 432: Vol. II, 101). Again the Aggi-Vacchagottasutta is another example (Majjhima Nikāya I, 484–489: Vol. II, 162–167). ‘Freed from denotation by material shape is the Tathāgata, Vaccha, he is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable as is the great ocean. “Arises” does not apply, ‘‘does not arise’’ does not apply, ‘‘both arises and does not arise’’ does not apply, ‘‘neither arises not does not arise’’ does not apply. That feeling, …That perception… Those habitual tendencies …That consciousness by one recognizing the Tathāgata might recognize him – that consciousness has been got rid of by Tathāgata, cut off at the root, made like a palm-tree stump that can come to no further existence and is not liable to arise again in future’ (Majjhima Nikāya I, 487–488: Vol. II, 166).
- 6.
Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya deals with apoha, especially its second chapter titled Svārthānumāna and the fifth chapter titled Apoha.
- 7.
Dharmakīrti wrote a commentary on Pramāṇasamuccaya of Dignāga after the name Pramāṇavārttikakārikā or simply Pramāṇavārttika. Dharmakirti’s Pramāṇavārttika deals with apoha, especially the first chapter Pramāṇasiddhiḥ, the second chapter Pratyakṣam and the third chapter Svārthānumānaṁ.
- 8.
One could get the latest discussions and debates on apoha by the contemporary Buddhist scholars in this volume.
- 9.
Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṁgraha, verses 867–1212, deals with apoha and the negative way implied therein.
- 10.
Ratnakīrti’s Apohasiddhi, the complete work, deals with apoha and negative way (Ratnakirti 1995).
- 11.
Explaining it with recourse to Jñānaśrīmitra, the later Indian Buddhist philosopher, McCrea and Patil explain: ‘If the question is ‘‘What is it that is expressed by words?’’ then, having set out these options (1) on the basis of appearance, (2) on the basis of determination, or (3) really, the answers are, in order, (1) ‘‘the image that is excluded from what is other, that resides in conceptual awareness’’; (2) ‘‘the particular that is excluded from what is other’’; or (3) ‘‘nothing.’’ This has already been said. Therefore, establishing the position that words and inferential reasons have exclusions as their objects is for the sake of making it known that all properties are inexpressible’ (McCrea and Patil 2010: 96–97).
- 12.
As Reginald A. Ray holds, there could be two stages of Mahāyāna origins. The first stage must have had an origin as a forest movement of the laity sometime in the first century BC and the second stage sometime in the third–fourth century AD as a monastic one by the monks (Ray 1999: 412).
- 13.
The origin of the term Mahāyāna may be traceable to an earlier school known as Mahāsāṅghikas. In the Council of Vaiśāli, a hundred years after the mahāparinirvāṇa of the Buddha, the Saṅgha was divided into two opposing camps, the Sthaviras or the order of elders and the Mahāsāṅghikas or the order of the majority. The elders (sthaviras) denounced the Mahāsaṅghikas.
- 14.
There are scholars who disagree with Hirakawa’s thesis of stūpa and relic cult in relation to the beginning of Mahāyāna movement. Paul Williams writes in this connection: ‘Hirakawa’s paper relies on too many suppositions to be fully convincing, and Gregory Schopen has argued against Hirakawa that a number of important early Mahāyāna sūtras show a distinctly hostile attitude to the stūpa cult. Schopen’s suggestion, a suggestion that has had considerable influence, is that reference to worshipping texts themselves, an extremely reverential attitude to the Mahāyāna sūtras, indicates that in cultic terms early Mahāyāna may well have been centred on a number of book cults, groups of followers who studied and worshipped particular sūtras’ (Williams 2009: 23).
- 15.
For a detailed study of the Prajñāpāramitā literature, its origin and texts, see Conze 1978. In this work Conze gives a sketch of the historical development of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras and the main texts which became the foundation of Mahāyāna Buddhism particularly in India and Tibet. There are some 40 Prajñāpāramitā texts, some very long and some short, which mainly explore the key conceptions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, like śūnyatā, a position against discursive thought as prajñā is not discursive analysis, the Bodhisattva ideal, mahākaruṇa (compassion) together with prajñā (wisdom).
- 16.
‘In view of the discussion concerning Nāgārjuna’s date and location, and the evidence from inscriptions, Chinese pilgrims, and Buddhist doxographies discussed in the introduction, it is highly unlikely that Nāgārjuna could have lived in an exclusively Mahāyāna monastery. If we look at the inscriptions from the Andhra area, we must concede that in the lower Krishna Valley toward the end of the second century there simply were no Mahāyāna monasteries, either under the name ‘‘Mahāyāna’’ or under the name ‘‘Śākyabhikṣu” ’ (Walser 2008: 87).
- 17.
Tsong Khapa (1357–1419) was the most prominent Tibetan proponent of Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika distinction. This distinction had dominated the modern scholarship in India and the West.
- 18.
Own nature or intrinsic nature (svabhāva) is only a conceptual construct, and there can be no intrinsic nature of things.
- 19.
Caputo writes with reference to Derrida’s take on negative theology: ‘…negative theology, however negative it may be, is always a theology, and as such committed to a positive, hyperbolic hyper-affirmation of hyper essential being (hyperousios), viz. God’ (Caputo 1999: 187).
- 20.
MK 18, 8: ‘All is real, or all is unreal, all is both real and unreal, all is neither unreal nor real; this is the graded teaching of the Buddha’ (Siderits and Katsura 2013: 200).
- 21.
MK 22, 11: ‘Nothing could be asserted to be śūnya, aśūnya, both śūnya and aśūnya, and neither śūnya nor aśūnya. They are asserted only for the purpose of provisional understanding’ (Inanda 1993: 134). Siderits and Katsura translate it: ‘ ‘‘It is empty’’ is not to be said, nor ‘‘It is non-empty,’’ nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [‘‘empty’’] is said only for the sake of instruction’ (Siderits and Katsura 2013: 247).
- 22.
My reference here is to Jin Y. Park’s statement that ‘The unnameable has names, though as will become clear as we move on, such as ‘‘the middle path,’’ ‘‘the middle voice,’’ ‘‘the dependent-co-arising,’’… These concepts are unnameable because they violate the basic rules of language, but they have names because we need to discuss them’ (Park 2006: 8).
- 23.
Reference here is to the work of Walpola Rahula titled What the Buddha Taught (Rahula 1974).
- 24.
While defining what is ‘Nibbāna’, Rhys Davids and Stede in the Pali Text Society’s Pali English Dictionary write ‘…is the untranslatable expression of the Unspeakable, of that for which in the Buddha’s own saying there is no word, which cannot be grasped in terms of reasoning and cool logic, the Nameless, the Undefinable’ (Rhys Davids and Stede 2009: 405).
- 25.
Inada’s translation of the verse goes like this: ‘The wise men (i.e., enlightened ones) have said that śūnyatā or the nature of thusness is the relinquishing of all false views. Yet it is said that those who adhere to the idea or concept of śūnyatā are incorrigible’ (Inanda 1993: 93). In their recent work with MK translation, Siderits and Katsura translate it as ‘Emptiness is taught by the conquerors as the expedient to get rid of all (metaphysical) views. But those for whom emptiness is a (metaphysical) view have been called incurable’ (Siderits and Katsura 2013: 145). Siderits and Katsura’s commentary on the verse ends like this: ‘So to the extent that emptiness gets rid of all metaphysical views, including itself interpreted as a metaphysical view, it might be called a meta-physic. Buddhapālita sums up the situation more positively by describing those who do not make this error and instead see things correctly: ‘‘They see that emptiness is also empty” ’ (Siderits and Katsura 2013: 145–146).
- 26.
MK 24, 18: ‘Dependent origination we declare to be emptiness. It (emptiness) is a dependent concept; just that it the middle path’ (Siderits and Katsura 2013, 277). Inada’s translation goes like this: ‘We declare that whatever is relational origination is śūnyatā. It is a provisional name (i.e., thought construction) for the mutuality (of being) and, indeed, it is the middle path’ (Inanda 1993: 148).
- 27.
Augustine writes ‘Have I spoken of God, or uttered His praise, in any worthy way? Nay, I feel that I have done nothing more than desire to speak; and if I have said anything, it is not what I desired to say. How do I know this, except from the fact that God is unspeakable? But what I have said, if it had been unspeakable, could not have been spoken. And so God is not even to be called “unspeakable,” because to say even this is to speak of Him. Thus there arises a curious contradiction of words, because if the unspeakable is what cannot be spoken of, it is not unspeakable if it can be called unspeakable. And this opposition of words is rather to be avoided by silence than to be explained away by speech. And yet God, although nothing worthy of His greatness can be said of Him, has condescended to accept the worship of men’s mouths, and has desired us through the medium of our own words to rejoice in His praise. For on this principle it is that He is called Dues (God). For the sound of those two syllables in itself conveys no true knowledge of His nature…’ (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 1, 6, at http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augustine/ddc1.html accessed on 8 June 2015). One finds an echo of the same ‘passing over in silence’ in Wittgenstein (of twentieth century): ‘Whereof one cannot speak of, thereof one must be silent’ (Tractutus Logico-Philosophicus 7: Wittgenstein 1983: 189). See also in this connection Smith (Smith 2000).
- 28.
In the ‘post-Derridean debates over the radical possibilities of Christian tradition’, Pseudo-Dionysius takes a centre place (Fisher 2001: 529–548).
- 29.
Buning defines the negative way in this manner: ‘…(it) is a manner of dialectic or paradoxical expressions that contains both affirmation (kataphasis, ‘‘speaking-with’’ or saying) and negation (apophasis, ‘‘speaking-away’’ or unsaying), with a semantic force of its own, which perforce subverts the normal semantics of being and nothingness. It is a form of infinite linguistic regress that relentlessly turns back upon its own propositions and generates distinctive paradoxes that include within themselves a large number of radical transformation’ (Buning 2000:45).
- 30.
R. S. Thomas’ celebrated poem Via Negativa goes like this:
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection. (http://allpoetry.com/Via-Negativa Accessed on 5 June 2015).
- 31.
Aristotle wrote that all men by nature desire to know, and, hence, the chief among the faculties of soul for the Greeks is faculty of knowledge: ‘All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics, I: 1: 980a).
- 32.
In Western Christian tradition, ‘the Hellenistic era was dominated by the desire to reach God’ (Spidlik 1986: 329). While the Gnostics emphasised on knowledge alone, by excluding faith and charity, the Fathers declared that everything has been created for the sake of the knowledge of God (Spidlik 1961: 11–15). The via negativa of the Platonic tradition has influenced the Christian West tremendously. For a detailed account, see Carabine 1995.
- 33.
We can find a large pool of literature on via negative in Western mysticism. Besides that any standard volume on mysticism will give an amplified version of Western tradition (as for instance see King 2001: 1–190).
- 34.
By Syriac Church I mean the Aramaic-/Syriac-speaking and Aramaic-/Syriac-writing Christian communities of the East in the second and third centuries of the Christian era in Syria, Mesopotamia and India, and today it would be the region comprising Syria, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and India (Kerala). It had its beginning sometime in 40 AD at Adiabene – present day Arbil in Iraq – with the conversion of a local ruling dynasty to Judaism which in turn became Christians. Later on Edessa – present day Urfa in southeast Turkey – became the centre of this Aramaic-/Syriac-speaking Christian communities in the second/third century AD (Murre-van den Berg 2010: 249–268).
- 35.
Spidlik writes ‘Among the Syrian Church Fathers the two most illustrious names come from the fourth century: Aphraates (Aphrahat) and Ephrem. … Syrian ascetic teaching goes back to primitive spirituality with no loss of originality. … Certainly, their psychological observations were generally more refined than those of the Greeks. Their sacred hymnography and the metrical homilies (memrè) contain passages which are among the most beautiful Christian poetry ever written, (Spidlik 1986: 15).
- 36.
Aphrahat is the first major Syriac writer of the mid-fourth century (c. 340) AD whose works survive. He must have been an Abbot of the famous monastery of Mar Mattai, near Mosul in north Iraq. He has left 23 homilies, and they are known as Demonstrations of Aphrahat. See also chapter 1 of Brock 1987: 1–28.
- 37.
Ephrem, a poet and theologian, is unsurpassed among Syriac writers and he has justly been acclaimed as ‘the greatest poet of the patristic age and perhaps the only theologian poet’ (Brock 1987: 30).
- 38.
Isaac of Nineveh (seventh century AD) was born in Qatar in Persian Gulf, which was an important centre of Christianity, and he was ordained the bishop of Nineveh (Mosul) in the great monastery of Beth Abe in north Iraq, but left his diocese after 5 months and retired to the mountains of Khuzistan to lead a solitary life. He is one of the most profound writers on spirituality produced by Syriac Churches. See also Chapter 12 in Brock 1987: 242–301.
- 39.
There is a clear-cut distinction between classical period and Hellenistic period of Greek philosophy. Classical period ends with Aristotle, whereas the Hellenistic period would include the Stoics, Epicureans, neopythagoreans, Skeptics and Neoplatonists (Long 1986).
- 40.
The early Fathers of the Church ‘were exposed in the schools above all to the philosophic doctrines which, more than anything else, created the atmosphere in which they lived: … Middle Platonism, and later Neoplatonism… We must think in terms of a subtle interplay of action and reaction rather than of a systematic influence’ (Spidlik 1986:9).
- 41.
Lossky writes ‘There have been many attempts to make a neoplatonist of Dionysius. … The God of Dionysius, incomprehensible by nature, the God of Psalms: ‘‘who made darkness his secret place,’’ is not the primordial God-Unity of the neoplatonists. … In his refusal to attribute to God the properties which make up the matter of affirmative theology, Dionysius is aiming expressly at the neo-platonist definitions: ‘‘He is neither One, nor Unity’’ (oυδε έν, oυδε ένότης). In his treatise Of the Divine Names, in examining the name of the One, which can be applied to God, he shows its insufficiency and compares with it another and ‘‘most sublime’’ name – that of the Trinity, which teaches us that God is neither one nor many but that He transcends this antinomy, being unknowable in what He is [Of the Divine Names XIII: 3]’ (Lossky 1968: 29–31).
- 42.
For Turner, the foundation of western Christian mystical tradition is ‘the ‘‘Allegory of the Cave’’ in the Book 7 of Plato’s Republic and the story in the Exodus of Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai’ (Turner 1998: 11), and Turner explains it by relying on Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings and Plato (Turner 1998: 11–18). Further, Turner refers to the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ in Plato’s Republic and writes, ‘Plato, then intended this fiction as an allegory of the philosopher’s ascent to knowledge. Christians read it as an allegory of the ascent to God’ (Turner 1998: 15). Turner explains again: ‘Denys invented the genre for the Latin Church; and for sure, he forged the language, or a good part of it, and he made a theology out of those central metaphors without which there could not have been the mystical tradition that there has been: ‘‘light’’ and ‘‘darkness,’’ ‘‘ascent’’ and ‘‘descent,’’ that love of God and eros. This is the vocabulary of our mysticism: historically we owe it to Denys; and he owed it, as he saw it, to Plato and Moses’ (Turner 1998: 13).
- 43.
Brock writes ‘Wherever the influence of the Dionysian writings was strong (and it was strong in both East and West but above all in the West), the heart is not important location in the spiritual geography of the human being. It has become separated on this map of sacred space from the intellect (and in some cases more or less replaced by it). This is why, in the Western Christian tradition ‘‘prayer of the heart’’ usually has a somewhat narrower sense than it has in most of the Eastern Christian tradition, for in the West the heart is simply the seat of emotions, of affective prayer, whereas in the East it has (among certain writers at any rate) retained its biblical role of being the seat of the intellect and as well’ (Brock 1988: 42).
- 44.
The often quoted ‘silencing’ of everything that is not God in Augustine’s Confessions is a classic example of apophatism in Augustine. It goes like this: ‘If to any man the tumult of the flesh grew silent, silent the images of earth and sea and air; and if the heavens grew silent, and the very soul grew silent to herself and by not thinking of self mounted beyond self: if all dreams and imagined visions grew silent, and every tongue and every sign and whatsoever is transient – for indeed if any man could hear them, he should hear them saying with one voice: We did not make ourselves, but He made us who abides for ever: but if, having uttered this and so set us to listening to Him who made them, they all grew silent, and in their silence He alone spoke to us, not by them but by Himself: so that we should hear His word, not by any tongue of flesh nor the voice an angel, nor the sound of any thunder, nor in the darkness of a parable, but that we should hear Himself …’ (Augustine 2006: Confessions, Book IX, 25, 179).
- 45.
Marguerite Porete was burned to death on 1 June 1310 in the Paris inquisition. For a detailed account of her life and trial, see Babinsky 1993: 5–47.
- 46.
Richard Woods explains the via negativa in Eckhart in this way: ‘In so far as a path or a way to God exists, it is the via negativa, the simplification and unification of consciousness. It has two lanes, so to speak – one is aphairesis, stripping away all ideas, images, concepts of God so as to rest in Truth, the simple apprehension of God’s grounding presence. The other is apatheia – the achievement of emotional calmness by detachment from all possessiveness, dividedness and self-centredness, so as to abide in selfless love of God and neighbor’ (Woods 2011: 109).
- 47.
Thanks to my familiarity with the thought of Eckhart, I had strong inkling after reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that there must have been an influence of Eckhart on Wittgenstein. This has been confirmed by Turner in one of his recent writings. Turner writes: ‘…Wittgenstein was much influenced by Schopenhauer. When that student (Turner’s PhD scholar), Andy King, digging deeper into Schopenhauer’s sources, was able to show that he, in turn, was deeply indebted to the fourteenth-century Dominican friar known as Meister Eckhart, on whom I was working at that time, it was then that there seemed to be better reasons than mere whim to wonder as a potential analogy between Wittgenstein and Eckhart. For now it seemed that there were grounds for exploring links in a traceable line of intellectual continuity. … he (Wittgenstein) is not in the least inclined attach the name ‘‘God’’ in any way to those unsayable conditions, as Eckhart did. However, when, for his part, Eckhart demonstrates that this ‘‘God’’ has not, and cannot, have a “name” – for “God,” he insists, is not properly speaking, a name at all but is, as it were, a “place-holder” for the unnamable “ground” of that which we can name (Colledge and McGinn 1981, 180) – then the analogy continues to tease, for all that Wittgenstein himself refused any satisfyingly theological consummation. For was not Eckhart thereby concluding in his own way that even if God, as the extra-linguistic condition of the possibility of language, can be “shown,” most certainly he cannot be “said”?’ (Turner 2011: 280).
- 48.
The Cloud of Unknowing gives only just minimal clues of the identity of the author. The author is a male and 24-year old at the time of its composition. ‘The blessing conferred on his readers, in the final paragraph, may indicate that he was a priest’ and ‘it would appear that he kept his identity a secret in an attempt to direct reader’s attention to God rather than himself’ (Root 2001: 273).
- 49.
Entréme donde no supe,
Y quedéme no sabiendo,
Toda ciencia transcendiendo. (SE, 1: 53)
References
Abbreviations of Original Sources
AKB: Vasubandhu. (2012). Abhidharmakoṣa-bhāṣya. Abhidharmakoṣa-bhāṣya of Vasubandhu (Vols. I–IV) (Louis De La Valle Poussin, Trans.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
AMC: John of the Cross. (1991). The Ascent of Mount Carmel. In The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross (Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez, Trans., pp. 101–349). Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications.
LFL: John of the Cross. (1991). The Living Flame of Love. In: The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross (Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez, Trans., pp. 638–715). Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications.
MK: Nāgārjuna. (1960). Madhyamakaśāstra of Nāgārjuna with the Commentary Prasannapadā by Candrakīrti, P. L. Vaidya (Ed.). Buddhist Sanskrit Texts No.10.. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute of Post-graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning.
SEC: John of the Cross. (1991). Stanzas concerning an Ecstasy experienced in high Contemplation. In: The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross (Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez, Trans., pp.. 53–54). Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications.
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Sebastian, C.D. (2016). Nothingness: Two Traditions and a Concept. In: The Cloud of Nothingness. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 19. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3646-7_2
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