Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s10.t6.28

v1.c7.s10.t6.28

The Upanishads thinkers believed that as a supreme state of being, Brahman adopts no concrete form and exhibits no concrete attribute, or it will be subject to the constraints or limitations that come with concrete things, thus disqualifying it as a “supreme” being. Brahman cannot be understood or expressed in regular, secular terms, for the simple reason that anything that can be understood or expressed in concepts or words is limited, while true Brahman shall be infinite. There is no way to accurately “define” Brahman using ordinary, worldly concepts. In order to grasp the true meaning of Brahman, one must try and understand it from the various negations thereof. The only valid attempt to define Brahman is to use the famous phrase “neti-neti” (“not this - not this”). In other words, in describing Brahman, we shall relinquish the notion that Brahman have concrete attributes or forms and focus instead on describing what Brahman is not, rather than what it is. As *Kena Upanishad* 2.3 puts it, most brilliantly, “It is not known by those who know It; It is known by those who do not know It.”