Silence and Upāya

This chapter examines the paradox developed in the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra regarding the limits of language. The sūtra argues that ultimate reality is ineffable, and that regarding it one must be silent. But that is to say something about it, and the silence one maintains, if it is to express ultimate reality, must also be a kind of speech. Speech and silence, and the expressible and the ineffable, are hence paradoxically related.