The Ten Stages of Mind (Jūjūshinron)

Introduction

Around 830 the Japanese court asked the Buddhist schools to submit accounts of their teachings; Kukai, founder of Shingon, responded with this work in ten fascicles and a shorter version, The Precious Key to the Secret Treasury. He arranges ten stages of mind, each matched to a teaching: from goat-like instinct through Confucian ethics and non-Buddhist religion to the Buddhist vehicles of disciples and solitary buddhas, then Yogacara, Madhyamaka, Tendai and Kegon, and finally esoteric Shingon. The work is thus also an early comparative classification of religions. Kukai treats the lower stages not simply as errors but as partial expressions of the highest.