A-Way explores seven broad traditions through which humanity has sought meaning, wisdom, truth, and flourishing.
These traditions are not presented as competitors, nor as identical. Each carries unique insights, practices, histories, and questions. Together they form part of our shared human inheritance.
The purpose of A-Way is not to decide which tradition is “correct”, but to learn from them, compare them, and understand them, and choose how they continue to shape the world we live in.
The Seven Traditions
By tradition we mean a body of accumulated knowledge, practices, values, stories, and ways of understanding the world that are transmitted across generations.
Some traditions are religious. Some are philosophical. Some are cultural. Some are scientific. Each offers a different perspective on what it means to be human and how we should live together.
Abrahamic
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and related traditions.
Concerned with covenant, revelation, ethics, community, and humanity’s relationship with the divine.
Dharmic
Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and related traditions.
Concerned with dharma, liberation, self-cultivation, wisdom, and the nature of suffering.
East Asian
Confucian, Taoist, Shinto, and related traditions.
Concerned with harmony, balance, virtue, family, society, and living in accordance with nature.
Humanist
Humanist, secular, ethical, and civic traditions.
Concerned with human dignity, reason, responsibility, rights, and the flourishing of individuals and communities.
Indigenous
The wisdom traditions of First Peoples around the world.
Concerned with ancestry, place, stewardship, kinship, story, and the relationship between people and the living world.
Emerging
New and evolving approaches to meaning-making.
Concerned with innovation, integration, dialogue, and the search for new ways of understanding ourselves and our world.
Science
The traditions of observation, inquiry, evidence, and discovery.
Concerned with understanding reality through testing, questioning, and the continual refinement of knowledge.