Kūkai (774-835) is one of the most influential figures in Japanese Buddhism, Finding Japanese Buddhism inadequate he travelled to China on a government embassy in 804. There he so impressed his hosts that he was introduced to the revered monk Huiguo (746-805) who initiated him into the secrets of estoteric Buddhism.

Kūkai influence extended far beyond his own sect of Shingon. After his death Shingon rituals and teachings influenced Tendai Buddhism, which began to emphasize esoteric practices. Shingon also mingled with mountain asceticism to produce the Japanese folk religion Shugendō. Among believers, Kūkai is said not to have died, but to have entered a deep meditative state from which he awaits the coming of the future Buddha, Miroku. For this reasons pilgirms throughout Japan could believe that Kūkai appeared to them.

Kūkai 's Recapitualtion of the Ten Stages of Religious Consciousness

1) The mind animal-like and goatish in its desires. The mass-man in his madness realizes not his faults. He thinks but of his lusts and hungers; he is like a butting goat.

2) The mind ignorant and infantile yet abstemious. Influenced by external causes, the mind awakens to temperance in eating. The will to do kindnesses sprouts, like a seed in good soil. [Confucianism.]

3) The mind infantile and without fears. The pagan hopes for birth in heaven, there for a while to know peace. He is like an infant, like a calf that follows its mother. [Brahmanism or popular Taoism.]

4) The mind recognizing only the objects perceived, not the ego. The mind understands only that there are Elements, the ego it completely denies. The Tripikata of the Goat-Cart is summed up by this verse. [Shrävaka vehicle of Hinayana Buddhism.]

5) The mind freed from the causes and seeds of karma. Having mastered the 12-divisioned cycle of causations and beginning, the mind extirpates the seeds of blindness. When karma birth has been ended, the ineffable fruits of Nirvana are won. [Pratyeka-Buddha vehicle of Hinayana Buddhism.]

6. The Mahayana mind bringing about the salvation of others. When compassion is aroused without condition, the Great Compassion first appears. It views distinctions between "you" and "me" as imaginary; recognizing only consciousness it denies the external world. [The Hossō sect.]

7) The mind aware of the negation of birth. Through eightfold negations, foolishness is ended; with one thought the truth of absolute Voidness becomes apparent. The mind becomes empty and still; it knows peace and happiness that cannot be defined. [The Sanron sect.]

8. The mind which follows the one way of Truth. The universe is by nature pure; in it knowledge and its objects fuse together. He who knows this state of reality has a cosmic mind. [The Tendai sect.]

9. The mind completely lacking characteristics of its own. Water lacks a nature of its own; when met by winds it becomes waves. The universe has no determined form, but at the slightest stimulus immediately moves forward. [The Kegon sect.]

10) The mind filled with the mystic splendor of the cosmic Buddha. When the medicine of exoteric teachings has cleared away the dust, the True Words open the Treasury. When the secret treasures are suddenly displayed, all virtues are apparent. [The Shingon sect.]