Defining or describing through affirmation. Typically used to refer to knowledge about God framed by what God is, or what we can affirm about God. Contrasts with apophatic [theology].
Questions
Can we apply apophatic and cataphatic understandings of nirvana and enlightenment? Yes.
Cataphatic treatment of ultimate reality in Buddhism
Within Mahayana Buddhism, there is a species of scripture which essays a descriptive hint of Ultimate Reality by using positive terminology when speaking of it. This manifestation of Buddhism is particularly marked in the Dzogchen and Tathagatagarbha forms of the religion. Nirvana, for example, is equated with the True Self of the Buddha (pure, uncreated and deathless) in some of the Tathagatagarbha scriptures, and in other Buddhist tantras (such as the Kunjed Gyalpo or ‘All-Creating King’ tantra), the Primordial Buddha, Samantabhadra, is described as ‘pure and total consciousness’ - the ‘trunk’, ‘foundation’ and ‘root’ of all that exists.1
In the Buddhist scriptures, Gautama Buddha is recorded as describing Nirvana in terms of what it is not. The apophatic, or via negativa philosophical methodology is extremely common in earliest existing Buddhist doctrine, the Nikayas: “There is, monks, an unborn—unbecome—unmade—unfabricated” (Udana VIII.3). Furthermore, one of the key doctrines of Buddhism is Anatta, meaning “not-Soul,” which is the core adjective that forms the basis for most of Buddhist negative dialectics, wherein the core message to point to the Absolute and the soul in Buddhism is to deny Subjectivity and spiritual reality to any and all phenomena. Such as: “Form is anatta (not-Soul), feelings are anatta, so too are perceptions, experiences, and empirical consciousness” (Samyutta Nikaya 3.196). It is of course true that the Buddha denied the existence of the mere empirical “self” in the very meaning of “my-self” (this person, so-and-so, namo-rupa, an-atta), one might say in accordance the Buddha frequently speaks of this Self, or Spirit (mahapurisha), and nowhere more clearly than in the too often repeated formula “na me so atta,” “This/these are not my Soul” (na me so atta’= anatta/anatman), excluding body (rupa) and the components of empirical consciousness (vinnana/nama), a statement to which the words of Sankhara are peculiarly apposite. “None of these (aggregates) are my Soul indeed,” is the most common passage in Buddhism. No place in Sutta does the context of anatta forward or imply the negation, the denial of the Soul “most dear, the light, the only refuge” (Samyutta Nikaya 2.100, Anguttara Nikaya 4.97), but rather, instructs and illuminates to the unlearned what the Soul was not.
Sunyata, the concept of the Void, “is” beyond conceptionns of presence and absence, beyond categorical thought, yet, like the Dao, remains inexhaustible and ever-present. Many other East Asian traditions present something very similar to the apophatic approach: For example, the Dao De Jing, the source book of the Chinese Daoist tradition, asserts in its first statement: The Dao (“way” or “truth”) that can be described is not the constant/true Tao. ^[https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Negative_Theology_(Apophatic_Theology)#Buddhism]