 Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta is apophatic: nothing describing phenomenal features can be applied to Brahman. Even discussing Brahman without qualities (nirguna-brahman) is still a form of the formless Brahman (Brahma-sutra-bhasya III.2.14). So too, Plotinus stated that no name applies to the One (Enneads IV.9.5). In a remark echoed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas about God, he wrote that we can only state what the One is not, not what it is (Enneads V.3.14). 