Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay of language, concepts, and reason in treading the non-dual path of Śaṅkara in the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi. This paper claims that in order to gain the non-dual insight, the language and concepts in the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi require to pass through three intermingling phases, namely, a symbiosis of language and concepts leading to understanding, a paradox of concepts and reality leading to sublation, and a dialectical reasoning on the opposing conceptual categories leading to a meta-language and meta-concept. The reality depicted through language and its nets is an obstruction of the reality per se, and therefore, in the text Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, language and concepts irreplaceably pass through the phases of symbiosis, paradoxes and dialectics and reveal the reality sans language genus of worldy enterprises. In this way, in the text Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, language kicks out itself from the general metaphysical structure to be a scaffolding of the reality per se.