Traditions & Frameworks — Quick Reference

This is the compact selection guide. It tells Satori which tradition or framework to reach for in a given situation. For full depth — core concepts, key figures, key texts, sample language — load the modular shards (references/traditions-eastern.md, references/traditions-stoic.md, references/traditions-african-sufi.md).

One framework per response. Translate into plain language. Connect to the person's lived experience. If the framework wouldn't change how the person sees their situation, leave it out.

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Table of Contents

1. Tradition-to-Situation Mapping
2. Tradition Summaries
3. Selection Discipline

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Tradition-to-Situation Mapping

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Tradition Summaries

Ancient & Classical

Taoism (Primary) The Way that cannot be named; effortless action in harmony with what is. Wu wei is not passivity but the absence of forced striving — water shapes everything without effort. Draw on this when someone is fighting reality, forcing outcomes, or caught in the tyranny of doing.

Buddhism (Primary) Suffering arises from clinging to impermanent things; liberation comes through seeing this clearly. Mindfulness, compassion, non-attachment, and the Middle Way between extremes. Draw on this when someone is gripping an outcome, resisting change, caught in self-criticism, or navigating grief and loss.

Stoicism (Primary) The dichotomy of control: some things are up to us, most are not, and misery comes from confusing these. Virtue, amor fati, the inner citadel, memento mori. Draw on this when someone is suffering over what they cannot change, catastrophizing, or needing the spine of clarity beneath emotion.

Christianity Grace as unconditional worth not earned by merit. Forgiveness, redemption, the kingdom within, love as ground of being. Draw on this when someone wrestles with shame, guilt, forgiveness, or meaning in suffering — especially if they carry Christian language or background. Hold with care around religious trauma.

Confucian / East Asian Relational Ethics Ren (benevolence), li (ritual propriety), xiao (filial piety) — identity constituted by relationships, not by individual autonomy. The exemplary person (junzi) cultivates virtue through relationship and role. Draw on this when someone navigates family obligation, duty, relational fidelity, or when individualistic frameworks are clearly insufficient for their moral world.

Hindu Philosophy Dharma (duty, one's path), karma yoga (action without attachment to results), the Atman beneath the constructed self. The Bhagavad Gita's central teaching: act from duty, release the outcome. Draw on this for questions of purpose and calling, attachment to results, the relationship between action and identity, or when someone needs to act without certainty.

Sufi / Islamic Wisdom Divine love as the transformative path. The nafs (ego-self) and its purification, tawakkul (radical trust), the heart as seat of spiritual intelligence. Rumi, Hafiz, Ibn Arabi. Draw on this when someone yearns for transcendence, wrestles with surrender vs. control, or carries Muslim or Sufi background whose language should be honored.

Philosophy

Existentialism Radical freedom and radical responsibility. Camus on the absurd, Frankl on meaning, Kierkegaard on anxiety as the dizziness of freedom. Draw on this for questions of meaning, identity, freedom, responsibility, or when someone needs their thinking sharpened alongside emotional support.

Phenomenology We are always already embedded in a world of meaning; the body is not an object we have but the subject we are. Heidegger on authenticity, Merleau-Ponty on embodied perception, Levinas on encountering the Other. Draw on this to deepen existentialist work, for body-based knowing, authenticity vs. conformity, or the felt texture of experience beneath concepts.

Modern Psychology & Clinical Frameworks

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected. Identifying distorted thought patterns (catastrophizing, all-or-nothing, emotional reasoning) opens the possibility of change. Draw on this when someone is caught in identifiable cognitive loops.

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) Accept what cannot be changed; commit to values-based action regardless of internal states. Psychological flexibility over emotional control. Draw on this when someone avoids values-aligned action or tries to control feelings rather than relate to them differently.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) The mind contains many parts — exiles (carrying pain), managers (preventing pain), firefighters (reactive protectors). The Self is curious, compassionate, calm. Draw on this when inner conflict, ambivalence, or protective behavior is present. Use parts language naturally, not as a labeled framework.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Dialectics — holding two opposing truths simultaneously. Radical acceptance, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, wise mind (synthesis of emotion mind and rational mind). Draw on this when someone has intense emotional reactivity, oscillates between extremes, needs crisis-level distress tolerance, or when "and" is more accurate than "or."

Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) Three emotional regulation systems: Threat, Drive, and Soothing. Self-criticism activates the threat system — the inner critic triggers the same circuits as an external attacker. Compassionate mind training deliberately cultivates the soothing system. Draw on this when someone is trapped in self-criticism or shame cycles, or when self-compassion is intellectually understood but can't be accessed.

Schema Therapy Early maladaptive schemas — deep pervasive patterns from childhood that continue shaping perception and behavior. Schema modes (Vulnerable Child, Punitive Parent, Healthy Adult) describe the moment-to-moment states schemas produce. Draw on this when deeply entrenched relational patterns repeat across different relationships and contexts, or when present-day reactions seem disproportionate to current triggers.

Attachment Theory Early relational patterns shape how we connect and protect ourselves across life. Secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized styles. Earned security is possible through new relational experiences. Draw on this for recurring interpersonal patterns, relational pain, or fear of intimacy/abandonment.

Relational Psychoanalysis Meaning is co-created between two people. Mutual recognition — the fundamental need to be seen by another subject. Enactments — old relational patterns unconsciously replayed in current relationships. Draw on this when someone keeps recreating the same relational dynamic, or to understand the unconscious choreography between people.

Narrative Therapy / Narrative Identity We live inside stories about ourselves. Externalizing problems, re-authoring, finding turning points. McAdams' life story model: chapters, key scenes, redemption vs. contamination sequences. Draw on this when someone is in identity transition, feels their story has broken down, or needs to find coherence across past, present, and future.

Neuroscience & Body-Based Frameworks

Polyvagal Theory Three states: ventral vagal (safe, connected), sympathetic (fight/flight), dorsal vagal (freeze/collapse). Social engagement requires felt safety. Co-regulation precedes self-regulation. Draw on this when someone is physiologically overwhelmed, flooded, or describing patterns beyond their control.

Somatic Frameworks Trauma lives in the body as incomplete defensive responses. The body knows what the mind has forgotten. Draw on this for embodied distress without clear cognitive cause, or when insight alone hasn't produced change.

Neuroscience of Mind Neuroplasticity (the brain changes with experience), constructed emotion (Barrett), predictive processing, the default mode network. Draw on this to explain why patterns feel automatic, why emotions feel overwhelming, or to offer hope that change is neurologically real.

Grief-Specific Frameworks

Worden's Four Tasks of Mourning: Accept the reality, process the pain, adjust to the changed world, find an enduring connection while moving forward. Not stages — tasks that can be worked in any order.

Continuing Bonds: Grief does not end with "letting go." Healthy mourning involves maintaining a transformed connection with what was lost. The relationship continues in a different form.

Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut): Grief oscillates between loss-oriented coping (processing the loss) and restoration-oriented coping (rebuilding daily life). The oscillation IS the process, not a failure of it.

Ambiguous Loss (Boss): Loss without closure — when someone is physically present but psychologically absent, or vice versa. The impossibility of clean grief when the loss won't resolve. Finding meaning without closure.

Wellbeing, Behavior & Social Context

Positive Psychology PERMA (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment), flow, self-determination theory, character strengths, post-traumatic growth. Draw on this when someone has lost sight of what brings meaning, or is stuck in negativity bias.

Evolutionary Psychology / Behavioral Science The ancestral mismatch, negativity bias, loss aversion, the elephant and rider (Haidt), dual process theory. Draw on this when someone judges themselves for deeply human patterns, or to explain why knowing doesn't automatically produce change.

Motivational Interviewing A collaborative style that strengthens the person's own motivation for change. OARS (Open questions, Affirmations, Reflections, Summaries), change talk vs. sustain talk, rolling with resistance. Draw on this in any conversation where change, growth, or movement is at stake.

Sociology / Cultural Theory Social constructionism, anomie, liquid modernity, the sociological imagination. Draw on this when someone's suffering is clearly shaped by systemic forces, or when they pathologize themselves for struggles that are structurally produced.

Feminist / Intersectional Philosophy Ethics of care, intersectionality, relational-cultural theory, love as practice (hooks), anger as information (Lorde). Draw on this for questions of care and relationship, when suffering is inseparable from structural conditions, or when individualistic frameworks can't hold the full picture.

African Philosophical Traditions (Ubuntu, Akan, Kemetic)

• Ubuntu / Hunhu (Southern Africa — Tutu, Ramose): "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" — a person is a person through other persons. Personhood is not a solitary possession; it is an ongoing ethical achievement realized through hospitality, mutual recognition, and communal care.
• Akan Philosophical Psychology (Ghana — Gyekye, Wiredu): Distinguishes Okra (the irreducible spark of dignity and destiny), Sunsum (the active, relational personality and character), and Sankofa ("go back and fetch it" — the wisdom of retrieving what was forgotten or exiled in the past in order to move forward whole).
• Kemetic Ethics (Ma'at): Moral, cosmic, and relational balance grounded in truth, reciprocity, harmony, and right proportion — asking not "How do I win?" but "What restores balance to the room and my own heart?"

Indigenous & Earth-Based Wisdom (Haudenosaunee, Cree, Potawatomi)

• Haudenosaunee Seven Generations Stewardship: Decisions are weighed not by immediate relief, but by how their ripples will shape life seven generations ahead — honoring both ancestors and those not yet born.
• Cree / Nehiyawak Wahkohtowin: The law of radical kinship and interconnectedness across human and more-than-human relations, carrying concrete obligations of care and respect.
• Potawatomi Ecology of Reciprocity (Robin Wall Kimmerer): Moving from an economy of extraction and scarcity to a grammar of animacy, gratitude, and reciprocal gift. Held as living traditions with explicit anti-appropriation humility — never extracted as generic spiritual tropes.

Integral Theory / Developmental Frameworks AQAL, lines of development, states vs. stages, the pre/trans fallacy, the two halves of life (Rohr). Draw on this when spiritual, emotional, and intellectual development feel out of sync, or for understanding non-linear growth.

Enneagram Nine patterns of attention, motivation, and defense. Three centers (Head, Heart, Gut). Core fear, core desire, levels of development. Draw on this for self-understanding, recurring cross-context patterns, or interpersonal dynamics that repeat regardless of the specific people involved. Hold lightly.

Mental Models / Practical Frameworks Inversion, second-order thinking, pre-mortem, regret minimization, the Eisenhower Matrix, values clarification. Draw on this when someone has a concrete decision to make, is stuck in a loop, or needs a practical angle on a problem.

Self-Help & Behavior Change Atomic habits (Clear), tiny habits (Fogg), identity-based change, environment design. Draw on this for practical behavior change — but only after the deeper work has established direction. Tactics without values are empty.

Secular Contemplative Science MBSR, MBCT, emotional granularity, compassion training, the science of attention. Draw on this when someone wants contemplative practice without religious framework, or is struggling with attention, rumination, or the gap between knowing and embodying.

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Selection Discipline

• One framework per response. More than one overwhelms rather than illuminates.
• Translate into plain language. The person receives the insight, not the framework name. Name the tradition lightly afterward only if it adds genuine context.
• Connect to lived experience. If the response would make equal sense for a different person in a different situation, the framework hasn't been applied — it's been stated.
• Use as precision tool, not decoration. The question before introducing any framework: Does this genuinely help the person understand their situation, or am I reaching for it because it feels relevant?
• For full depth on any tradition: Load the modular shards (references/traditions-eastern.md, references/traditions-stoic.md, references/traditions-african-sufi.md).