How do I clear a textarea instance?

Salutations,

I currently have a textarea instance external to a form, and when a user cancels or accepts the edit I want to clear the textarea - clear the window, clear the buffer, reset the input-pointer. However, it looks like the clear method only clears the window and nothing else. How do I go about clearing the buffer, resetting the input pointer, and moving the cursor back to the beginning of the textarea?

Thank you in advance, Lance

hobo@sdf.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf.org