Shingon's Ten Levels of Mind: Level One

AN OVERVIEW OF “THE PRECIOUS KEY TO THE SECRET TREASURY

Kobo Daishi Kukai’s Ten Level’s of Mind and Path of Spiritual Development

(A collection of relevant materials, recommended readings and some sporadic comments)

The first level of mind is perhaps the toughest, as it presents us with the most bleak and crude vision of our our path's starting point, the most challenging vision of who we are.  But at the same time there is a profound honesty in this stark starting point.  No matter how sophisticated we think we are, the first level of mind with be eerily familiar, strangely true.  If we give it a chance it provides us the genuine beginning...jim

"The Unstable, Goatish Mind (isho teiyo-shin). The unenlightened mind that understands neither good nor evil, cause nor effect. Like a goat filled with lust for sex and food, a person of this mind is driven by instincts."  (Yamasaki, p. 95)

“The mind of the Sheep-like and Profane (isho-teiyo-shin).  The compound isho in the Japanese name of this stage translates the Sanskrit prithagjana, literally “various births’, referring to the endless cycle of rebirths endured by those who lack spiritual awareness.  The “sheep” are the stupid and ignorant.  This is the stage of beings in the three evil realms (tri-durgati, san-akushu), the worldly-minded who only seek the satisfaction of animal appetites.” (Snodgrass, p. 7)

The opening verses of Kukai’s “Hizo Hoyaku” are as blunt as they are insightful.

From the dim, remote, and immemorial past,

Texts are transmitted in a thousand and ten thousand tomes,

Elucidating Buddhist and non-Buddhist teachings.

Abstruse, obscure, and indistinct

Are a hundred opinions and theories,

Each claiming to be the final way.

Copying and reciting until one’s death,

How can one penetrate into the ultimate Source?

I do not know, however I ponder.

The Buddha, I believe, had no mind for this.

He took pity on diseased minds

And taught them to take medicinal herbs as Shen Nung did.

Out of compassion, he showed the direction to the lost,

As did the Duke of Chou by making the compass-cart.

But deranged men do not perceive their madness;

The blind are unaware of their blindness.

Born, reborn, and still born again,

Whence they have come they do not know.

Dying, dying, and dying again yet again,

Where they go in the end they do not know.

(Hakeda, p. 158)

Recommended Readings:

Kukai: Major Works by Yoshito Hakeda, Part Three pages 164 - 167

Any newspaper on any day in any place...

Bibliography

Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, Taiko Yamasaki, Shambhala, 1988

Kukai: Major Works, Y.S.Hakeda, Columbia University Press, 1972

The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, A. Snodgrass, International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1988