The term ‘Buddha Way’ surfaces across the depth-psychology corpus as a contested but generative category, functioning simultaneously as historical path, soteriological imperative, and psychological analogue. Dōgen Eihei treats it with institutional precision: the Buddha Way demands wholehearted practice, realized most purely in shikantaza (just sitting), and entails a renunciation of property, rank, and worldly reputation that constitutes a complete reformation of body and mind. For Dōgen, the Way is not a metaphor but a disciplined inheritance transmitted from Shakyamuni through a lineage of masters. Watts and Suzuki, by contrast, situate the Buddha Way within a broader mythopoetic framework: the Way as the breaking-point of ordinary consciousness, a sudden ‘turning about’ that cannot be willed. Campbell reads the Buddha’s departure from the palace and progress toward the Bodhi-tree as a hero-mythological enactment whose cultural consequences shaped half of humanity. Brazier, writing from a therapeutic register, aligns the Buddha Way with the actualizing tendency of humanistic psychology, interpreting ethics not as external constraint but as the natural expression of buddha-nature. The tension that runs through the corpus is structural: is the Buddha Way an achieved accomplishment requiring sustained monastic discipline, or an uncovering of what was always already present? This polarity — effort versus recognition, practice versus nature — gives the term its enduring psychological charge.
To reach Buddhahood we should make an effort to practice the Way wholeheartedly. The genuine practice of being in accordance with the [Buddha’s] teaching is nothing other than just sitting
Dōgen identifies the Buddha Way as constitutively realized through shikantaza (just sitting), establishing wholehearted practice as the sole authentic form of the Way in his Sōtō monastic context.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234thesis
The rank of Buddha is the rank of a homeless monk. This is the rank venerated by all heavenly and human beings. This is the rank of ultimate awakening.
Dōgen reframes the Buddha Way as the abandonment of worldly rank for the status of the homeless monk, presenting renunciation as the structural precondition for ultimate awakening.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234thesis
the world people, whether blamed or praised, if they follow the Buddha’s Way and practice it, then surely they will honor me
Dōgen argues that indifference to public opinion — whether censure or praise — is the defining disposition of one genuinely practicing the Buddha Way.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234thesis
ethics are not seen as a restriction, but as a liberation. They are the way to realize our core nature and consequently are the path of truth and happiness.
Brazier reinterprets the ethical dimension of the Buddha Way as psychological liberation rather than moral constraint, aligning sila with the realization of buddha-nature.
, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, 1995thesis
The White Path of four or five inches is very narrow and yet it is called tao, or the Great Path, because it is the Buddha’s path, and is wide enough for any man to walk in safety.
Spiegelman maps the Buddha Way onto Jungian individuation by reading the White Path parable as a lifelong integration of unconscious contents, equating the Buddha’s path with the Great Path (tao).
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985supporting
there is what the Lan-kavatara Sutra calls a ‘turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness.’ In this moment all sense of constraint drops away, and the cocoon which the silkworm spun around himself opens
Watts describes the culminating moment of the Buddha Way as a spontaneous reversal of ordinary consciousness, framing the path’s endpoint as something that cannot be achieved by volitional effort.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
Buddhahood (the status of a World Redeemer) is man’s proper end, and furthermore that since all things in reality are Buddha-things, all things potentially and actually are Saviors of the World.
Zimmer traces the Mahāyāna expansion of the Buddha Way from individual arhatship to universal Buddhahood, arguing that the Way’s telos shifts from personal liberation to the redemption of all sentient beings.
, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting
Trusting the buddha nature is similar to the humanistic idea that there is a reliable constructive growth process called the ‘actualizing tendency’.
Brazier positions the Buddha Way’s grounding in buddha-nature as functionally equivalent to Rogers’s actualizing tendency, establishing a therapeutic bridge between the path and Western depth psychology.
, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, 1995supporting
From one hermitage to another, one teaching sage to another, the Future Buddha passed in search of his way. For a time he joined a company of ascetics… until… he considered: ‘But this certainly is not the way to passionless knowledge and liberation.’
Campbell narrates Siddhartha’s progressive rejection of external teachers as the experiential discovery that the Buddha Way cannot be mediated through another’s discipline but must be found individually.
, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986supporting
What are taught are simply the ways that lead from various points of the spiritual compass to the Bodhi-tree; and to know those ways is not enough. Each has to find and sit beneath the tree himself.
Campbell insists that the Buddha Way is irreducibly personal: no teaching constitutes the Way itself, only the approach to an awakening each individual must undergo alone.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
To see the potential Buddhahood in all, the criminal and the animal as well as the virtuous and the human, is the most just approach possible to the beings of the world.
Zimmer extends the scope of the Buddha Way to a democratic recognition of latent Buddhahood in every being, reading it as the ethical and metaphysical foundation of Bodhisattva practice.
, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting
When second nature has been trained and become calm and obedient, then we are free to give ourselves to our true master, which is the buddhata.
Brazier uses the analogy of disciplined artistic training to argue that the Buddha Way requires sustained second-nature cultivation before first nature — buddha-nature — can manifest freely.
, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, 1995supporting
A Buddha, therefore, is a man of no rank. He is not above, like an angel; he is not below, like a demon. He has transcended all dualities whatsoever.
Watts characterizes the endpoint of the Buddha Way as a radical transcendence of all hierarchical and dualistic categories, positioning the Buddha outside every ontological register.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
I should humbly compare myself with the predecessors and great monks in China and India. I should aspire to become equal to them… I completely reformed my body and mind from what they had been up to that point.
Dōgen presents the aspiration to equal the ancient masters as the motivating disposition of the practitioner on the Buddha Way, framing self-reformation as its personal psychological correlate.
, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, 1234aside
The Noble Eightfold Way can be replaced or interchanged with the ternary formulation of the doctrine of the Threefold Studies.
Spiegelman examines the structural flexibility of the Noble Eightfold Way, noting its doctrinal interchangeability with the Threefold Studies as evidence of Buddhism’s adaptive soteriological architecture.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985aside
It is a teaching that is supposed to have been enunciated by the Buddha Gautama directly after enlightenment. But since no one listening could understand a word, he began afresh and taught the simpler dualistic Hīnayāna
Campbell recounts the Avataṃsaka Sūtra tradition of the Buddha’s post-enlightenment teaching as a layered pedagogical strategy, implying that the Buddha Way must be graduated to the capacity of the listener.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962aside