Yiguandao presents itself as a comprehensive path in which Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist currents flow together into a single stream. From the Confucian side, it places moral cultivation and ethical behavior at the very heart of spiritual life, emphasizing filial piety, social harmony, and the fulfillment of one’s responsibilities. Concepts such as benevolence and propriety, along with practices of ancestor veneration and household ethics, are treated not as merely social virtues but as indispensable disciplines for spiritual refinement. In this way, the Confucian concern for family order, sincerity, and righteous conduct becomes the foundational framework within which all other practices are understood.

From Taoism, Yiguandao adopts a vision of the Dao—or Tao—as the ultimate principle underlying all existence, the ineffable source from which all things arise and to which they return. It stresses harmony with the natural order, drawing on ideas such as wu wei, yin–yang balance, and the cultivation of one’s inner nature. Practices of inner cultivation and meditation are oriented toward returning to an original, unspoiled state of being, echoing the Taoist ideal of simplicity and spontaneous alignment with the Way. In this perspective, spiritual practice is not a struggle against the world but a gentle attunement to the deeper pattern that already sustains it.

From Buddhism, Yiguandao takes up the language of karma, reincarnation, and liberation from cyclic existence, framing human life within a broader cosmological and soteriological horizon. Compassion and universal salvation are emphasized, and practices such as meditation, mindfulness, vegetarianism, and the recitation of scriptures are directed toward the alleviation of suffering and the accumulation of merit. The pursuit of enlightenment is not seen as an isolated quest but as inseparable from the aspiration to help all beings. Ethical discipline, contemplative practice, and compassionate action thus form a single, integrated path.

These three strands are not treated as competing systems but as complementary expressions of a single, underlying truth. Yiguandao explicitly invokes the ideal of the “Three Teachings in One,” teaching that figures such as Confucius, Laozi, and the Buddha were messengers of the same transcendent source. Its rituals and worship draw elements from all three traditions, while its doctrine presents moral development, harmony with the Dao, and liberation from suffering as mutually reinforcing dimensions of one spiritual journey. In this synthesis, social virtue, natural harmony, and transcendent awakening are woven together into a unified vision of human transformation.