 Kūkai used relegation to explain his detailed “theory of the ten mindsets” (jūjūshinron). (See the entry on   Kūkai, section 3.12.)  He analyzed all the philosophical standpoints known to him into a hierarchy of the ten mindsets producing them, starting from the base level of narcissistic philosophy driven by animal impulses, up through the mindsets of Confucianism, Daoism, and continuing in the hierarchy through all the Buddhist schools existing in Japan at the time. Kūkai ranked Kegon Buddhist philosophy at level nine, the highest level of exoteric thinking because it highlighted internal and holographic relations. Only Shingon’s esoteric philosophy of embodied theory-praxis ranked above it.