 Kūkai’s claim was that this esoteric method of ritual-bodily-meditational practice – involving the three media (or “mysteries”) of body, speech, and mind – will allow one to realize one’s direct embodied participation in the Dharmic samadhi of the hosshin, i.e., “enlightenment in this very embodied existence” (sokushinjōbutsu). The lack of any systematic esoteric ritual practice in exoteric Buddhism – from Kūkai’s perspective, their rituals were unsystematized, haphazard –, fails to lead to immediate enlightenment. Moreover the orthodox teaching of the exoteric schools was that it would take innumerable rebirths of training until one could attain Buddhahood. Kūkai instead claimed that esoteric Buddhism, with its rituals and meditational methods, can lead one, regardless of karmic dispositions, to instant enlightenment “in this very body.” Through yogic and mantric practices involving the body, the practitioner was to eliminate all attachments to the substantiality of self and of things and to their dichotomization – this for the sake of immediately realizing non-duality with the hosshin. In this way the idea of sokushinjōbutsu is put forth as a major distinguishing characteristic of esoteric from exoteric Buddhism, demonstrating the possibility of attaining enlightenment in one’s presently embodied existence in distinction from the long and gradual process over countless aeons of rebirths as taught by the exoteric schools.