Hakamaya [Noriaki] sees original enlightenment thought as an “experiential” philosophy stressing the ineffability of suchness. Thus, in his view it makes light of faith, intellect, and the use of language, by which the truth of dependent origination is to be discerned and investigated. Hakamaya sees the critical use of intellect and language as inseparable from normative Buddhism: Śākyamuni’s hesitation to preach was not because his realization was ineffable, but because of the difficulty of communi cating a teaching that goes “against the current” of the reality-affirming ideas that most people hold, based on the notion of topos. Without words, error cannot be criticized, nor truth demonstrated. Moreover, without language, we would not only be unable to recall and reflect crit ically upon the past but would lose all sense of time itself, becoming locked in a timeless, eternal present—a loss of the very faculty that distinguishes us as humans. (Page 81)