Negation and Renunciation: Śaṅkara’s Vairāgya and the Dark Night of St. John of the Cross in Comparative Perspective

Negation appears across diverse religious traditions and provides a fruitful point of entry for comparative theological reflection. This paper compares St. John of the Cross’s account of the dark night in Christian mysticism with Śaṅkara’s understanding of vairāgya (renunciation or dispassion) in Advaita Vedānta. Rather than classifying Advaita as a form of Christian negative theology, the study uses negation as a limited comparative heuristic for examining how practices of detachment, renunciation, and purification function within two distinct religious and philosophical frameworks. It argues that both thinkers employ disciplined forms of negation, but that these disciplines address different problems within their respective traditions. John of the Cross presents the dark night as a process of sensory and spiritual purification through which the soul is dispossessed of attachment and prepared for a loving and participatory union with God through faith, hope, and charity. Śaṅkara understands vairāgya, together with viveka, as a discipline that weakens attachment to impermanent objects and corrects the false identification of the self with the body, mind, agency, and individuality. These disciplines prepare the aspirant for liberating knowledge of the non-difference of ātman and Brahman. Although these two trajectories share a structurally comparable ascetical pattern, their goals remain fundamentally different: John’s dark night culminates in relational communion with God while preserving the Creator–creature distinction, whereas Śaṅkara’s renunciation prepares the aspirant for non-dual realization through the liberating knowledge that removes ignorance. This comparison clarifies both the structural affinities between the two disciplines and the distinct metaphysical, epistemological, and soteriological frameworks that determine their meaning.