Shentong Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta: Language, Negation, and Method

The Buddhist analysis of emptiness unfolds progressively through the Sravaka, Cittamatra, Svatantrika, and the Prasangika Madhyamaka, culminating in the conclusion that emptiness itself is empty. Nothing further can be said without reintroducing what has already been dismantled. Early Madhyamika proceeds almost entirely through negation, showing that nothing possesses independent existence. This approach is often seen as nihilistic. Advaita Vedanta begins from a parallel method of negation, dissolving identification with body and mind. Yet it is frequently accused of the opposite: eternalism, insofar as Brahman is often taken as a metaphysical ground for appearances. The Shentong (empty of the other) view, which emerges in later stages of Buddhist thought, occupies a position closer to the later stages of Advaita. The central question Shentong addresses is: if all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, does ultimate analysis lead to sheer absence, or does it leave something that cannot be negated without contradiction?

‎शून्य शून्य महाशून्य

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Modes of Emptiness and the End of Negation

In texts such as Progressive Stages on Mediation, the Shentong framework distinguishes between different modes of existence and their corresponding forms of emptiness. A key point insisted is that emptiness itself is not univocal. To say that something is “without essence” does not mean the same thing in every case. Something can exist only imaginatively as a conceptual projection. The imaginary nature is empty in the sense that it is the emptiness of the non-existent. As the texts state, “The imaginary nature is without essence in the sense that it does not exist according to its own characteristic.” An imagined fire does not burn; a purely imagined object has none of the characteristics it is said to possess.

The second is the emptiness of dependent existence. A tiger in a dream could cause genuine fear. But even though it appears, functions, and exerts causal force within experience, “the dependent nature is without essence in the sense that it never arises.” Its appearance is contingent upon causal processes, conceptions, and the fact that awareness itself does not appear as an object of thought. At the same time, the Shentong view makes another claim. While the dependent appearances have no independent existence, their very appearing is possible only because awareness itself is not an object among objects. It is no thing rather than nothing. It is described as “perfectly existent”. “The perfectly existent nature is absolute absence of essence in the sense that it is the absence of essence which is the Absolute.” This is not an assertion of a positive entity. Rather, it indicates that it is not eliminated by the same analysis that dissolves all objects. The “perfectly existent” is said to be without essence for a very different reason: not because it is absent, but because its essence is non-conceptual and therefore cannot appear as an object to thought.

Shentong sources repeatedly insist that from the point of view of the conceptual mind, the non-conceptual Wisdom Mind (jñāna) is without essence, while from its own point of view it is Absolute Reality. This limit of conceptual cognition is not a retreat into subjectivism. The conceptual mind only recognizes what can be grasped as an object, something with characteristics, boundaries, and relations. Divided Consciousness (vijñāna) is structured by division of the knower and known, and vijñāna must still be negated but the absence of objects is not absence of awareness. The Wisdom Mind (jñāna) is not something known at all, but the non-dual fact of knowing itself. It cannot be negated because every negation already presupposes it.

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Advaita Vedanta and Affirmative Language

This raises a parallel question within Advaita Vedanta: Can consciousness be shown distinctly from its contents? The way this problem is approached is through Chandrakirti’s sevenfold analysis of the chariot. Chandrakirti challenges the existence of a permanent soul. The chariot functions as a metaphor for a permanent soul, while its parts represent the ever-changing body and mind. A chariot is not identical to its parts, for if it were, then each part – the wheel, axle, or plank would itself have to be the chariot. Nor is it something apart from the parts, since no chariot can be found once the parts are removed. It cannot be the possessor of its parts, because that already presupposes a chariot distinct from the parts, offering only a relation without ever establishing the chariot itself. It is not the container in which the parts exist, for that would require the chariot to exist prior to and independently of its parts. Nor is it something contained within the parts, since nothing identifiable as a chariot can be located within them, whether individually or collectively. The chariot is also not the mere collection of parts, because when the parts are disassembled, the collection is no longer a chariot. Finally, it is not the shape or configuration of the parts, because shape depends entirely on the parts and cannot exist independently of them. The chariot is never found as an independently existing entity. If the chariot cannot be found this way, a question arises: where, then, is the soul?

As Swami Sarvapriyananda writes, the Advaitic gold analogy appears to pass through all seven logical cases. Gold is not identical to a gold necklace, yet it is not apart from it either. When Advaitians say that gold is “different” from the necklace, the difference is not classificatory but ontological. The claim is that gold is not an ornament among others, such as necklaces, rings, or earrings. It is the reality that appears as all of them. They do not claim that its existence is “separate” from them, but rather just different. When Advaitians say, “you are not the body or mind.” This is not meant to posit a separate witnessing entity apart from the body or mind, nor to suggest that each body – mind has its own separate witness. The language is pedagogical, intended to dissolve identification with the physical and mental self. The witness is not a thing, just as Brahman or pure consciousness is not a metaphysical ground for appearances.

Shri Harsha’s Khaṇdana Khaṇda Khāḍya makes it clear that Advaita does not arrive at Brahman by carving out an exception to negation, but by pressing negation to its limit. The text proceeds through a systematic dismantling of Nyāya’s epistemic machinery – perception, inference, definition, proof, causality, and relation. This critique does not stop at the empirical world, as even Brahman is not something that can be explained, defined, or established through proof, since the very resources required for such explanation are themselves undermined. The point is not that Brahman survives as a knowable metaphysical remainder once everything else is negated, but that nothing , neither worldly phenomena nor “ultra-phenomenal consciousness”, is intelligible within conceptual explanation. In this sense, Brahman is not preserved as a positive remainder after negation but is associated with the exhaustion of explanation. Questions such as “What is the proof of the existence of God?” are misplaced because the notion of proof belongs to the epistemic framework being dismantled. Affirmative language in Advaita does not function to posit an entity. Structurally, though not in terminology, Shri Harsha’s method parallels the Madhyamaka critique: what remains is not something that can be said intelligibly.

Language and Misconception

If both Buddhism and Advaita in their later stages deny a personal self, deny an inherently existing substance, and deny that the ultimate is an object of thought, why do they sound so different? Buddhist traditions, particularly Madhyamaka, consistently favor negative terms such as emptiness, void, or absence. Advaita Vedanta often uses affirmative words like fullness, Self, Brahman. Buddhism treats language as a liability and prioritizes precision. Positive metaphysical claims are avoided because what remains cannot be safely spoken of without distortion. This precision has consequences. To unfamiliar readers, Buddhism comes across as nihilistic, as though the end of analysis were mere absence. Advaita takes the opposite pedagogical risk. It uses positive terms – Self, witness, Brahman, to interrupt identification with body and mind. Phrases like “you are the witness” are not claims about a separate internal observer; it is a method for interrupting misidentification. Saying “Brahman is real” does not introduce a metaphysical substance; it denies that reality belongs to objects. This strategy sounds optimistic, guarding against the collapse into meaninglessness. But it can be mistaken for eternalism, as though Advaita were positing a metaphysical ground standing apart from appearances.

These risks are symmetrical. Buddhism risks being misunderstood as denying too much. Advaita risks being misunderstood as asserting too much. The difference lies in function, not in their ultimate metaphysical view. The Shentong view, however, comes closest to making this convergence explicit using ‘Buddha nature’, articulating a reality that is empty of conceptual essence yet not eliminated by negation, present as non-objectifiable awareness rather than as a thing. As Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa said, “Why should Buddha be called a non-believer?” He found what could not be expressed in words.