Param nirodhâdbhagavân bhavatîtyeva nohyate, Na bhavatyubhayam ceti nobhayam ceti nohyate: Atiṣṭhamâno ‘pi bhagavân bhavatîtyeva nohyate, Na bhavatyubhayam ceti nobhayam ceti nohyate. (_Mâdhyamika_, p. 199). [50] He was the third son of king of Kâçi (?) in southern India. He came to China A.D. 527 and after a vain attempt to convert Emperor Wu to his own view, he retired to a monastery, where, it is reported, he spent all day in gazing at the wall without making any further venture to propagate his mysticism. But finally he found a most devoted disciple in the person of Shen Kuang, who was once a Confucian, and through whom the Dhyâna school became one of the most powerful Mahâyâna sect in China as well as in Japan. Dharma died in the year 535. Besides the one here mentioned, he had another audience with the Emperor. At that time, the Emperor said to Dharma: “I have dedicated so many monasteries, copied so many sacred books, and converted so many bhiksus and bhiksunis: what do you think my merits are or ought to be?” To this, however, Dharma replied curtly, “No merit whatever.” [51] Another interesting utterance by a Chinese Buddhist, who, earnestly pondering over the absoluteness of Suchness for several years, understood it one day all of a sudden, is: “The very instant you say it is something (or a nothing), you miss the mark.” [52] _The Vimalakîrti Sûtra_, Kumârajîva’s translation, Part II, Chapter 5. [53] Deussen relates, in his address delivered before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1893, a similar attitude of a Vedantist mystic in regard to the highest Brahma. “The Bhava, therefore, when asked by the king Vaksalin, to explain the Brahman, kept silence. And when the king repeated his request again and again, the rishi broke out into the answer: ‘I tell it you, but you don’t understand it; _çânto ’yam âtmâ_, this âtmâ is silence!’” [54] It is a well-known fact that the Vedanta philosophy, too, makes a similar distinction between Brahman as sagunam (qualified) and Brahman as nirgunam (unqualified). The former is relative, phenomenal, and has characteristics of its own; but the latter is absolute, having no qualification whatever to speak of, it is absolute Suchness. (See Max Mueller’s _The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy_, p. 220 et seq.)