Buddhism is, among the major traditions, the one whose very name points at this project's heart: buddha means "awakened one," and awakening is precisely what the map is a map of. It resonates closely with the consciousness evolution layer.
The tradition in brief
Rooted in the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama some 2,500 years ago, Buddhism diagnoses the human problem as dukkha — the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of grasping — and prescribes a way out: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, leading toward liberation, or nirvana. Largely non-theistic, it emphasises direct insight over belief, and unfolds across the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana schools among roughly half a billion practitioners.
Its place in the map
Buddhism's insight into the constructed, non-separate nature of the self connects it straight to the non-dual awareness at the centre of the Polarity Transcendence layer. The map describes the tradition as Buddhists understand it, and treats its practice of direct seeing with the seriousness it has earned.
Buddhism offers a rigorous, tested path from suffering to awakening; the map describes it faithfully and honours its long science of the mind.