Traditions
Each tradition in its own terms: its history, thinkers, concepts and texts, and where it meets and differs from others.
- BuddhismThe traditions that follow the teaching of the Buddha on suffering and its cessation.
- Christian MysticismThe contemplative and mystical currents of Christianity, East and West, centred on union with God in love.
- Comparative mysticismThe modern study of mysticism across religions, from Max Müller and William James to the perennialists and their critics.
- ConfucianismThe Chinese tradition of learning, ritual and humaneness founded on the teaching of Confucius.
- DaoismThe Chinese philosophical and religious tradition of the Dao, the Way.
- Early Greek PhilosophyThe Greek thinkers before Socrates, who first asked what single source and order underlie the many things of the world.
- Integral YogaSri Aurobindo’s teaching of a spiritual evolution in which the divine is to be realized not beyond the world but in it.
- IslamThe religion of submission to the one God, revealed in the Qurʾān to the Prophet Muḥammad.
- JainismThe Indian religion of the Jinas, the “conquerors”, centred on non-harming and the soul’s liberation from karma.
- JudaismThe religion of the Jewish people, founded on the covenant with the one God and the Torah.
- Kashmir ŚaivismThe non-dual Śaiva traditions of medieval Kashmir, which teach that all is the free self-manifestation of Śiva’s consciousness.
- Modern philosophyWestern philosophy from Descartes and Spinoza to the present, and its questions about mind, knowledge and God.
- PlatonismThe philosophy of Plato and of the schools that interpreted him, from the Academy to the Middle Platonists.
- SāṃkhyaThe Indian school that distinguishes pure consciousness from nature, and finds liberation in knowing the difference.
- SikhismThe religion founded by Guru Nānak in the Punjab, devoted to the one God and the Guru’s word.
- StoicismThe Hellenistic school that taught life in agreement with the divine reason pervading the cosmos.
- The bhakti movementThe movements of loving devotion to God that spread across India from the sixth century, in the languages of the people.
- TranscendentalismThe New England movement of Emerson and Thoreau, which found the divine in nature and in the depths of each soul.
- VedāntaThe schools of Indian philosophy that interpret the Upaniṣads, the Brahma Sūtras and the Bhagavad Gītā.
- YogaThe classical Indian school of disciplined practice and meditation systematized in the Yoga Sūtras.