The Bon Faith

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Bön is the oldest spiritual tradition of Tibet and is oft-described as the shamanistic tradition of the Himalayas prior to the dissemination of Buddhism in the 7th century CE. The Bonpo are significantly more rich and textured. With the Himalayan diaspora of Bönpo lama and ngagpa to India due to the annexation of Tibet by the Chinese in 1950 CE, a complex appreciation of Bön is emerging by scholars. Bön, prior to the Tibetan diaspora, existed within a web of ancient indigenous animism, Hinduism, sympathetic magic, Buddhism, folk religion, shamanism, Vajrayana, asceticism and mysticism; complexes prevalent throughout the Himalaya and intermingling throughout the Inner Asian region. Pegg (2006) relates that these "...complexes include mosaics of performing practices and discourses rather than discrete or fixed sets of practices or beliefs. They are syncretic and overlapping. The power of sound to communicate with spirits is recognized..." and a recurrent motif throughout the region.

The Bönpo's histories and that of academia differ, as is common to all traditions. Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche is held to have taken birth in the land of Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring, which if not fable, remains a mystery to known history. Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring is traditionally described with Mount Yung-drung Gu-tzeg, (possibly Mount Kailash) in western Tibet as its axis mundi. Due to the sacredness of Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring and the mountain, both the sauwastika and the number nine are of great significance and considered auspicious by the Bönpo.

In the nineteenth century, Sharza Tashi Gyeltsen, a Bön master (whose collected writings comprise eighteen volumes) significantly rejuvenated the tradition. His disciples Kagya Khyungtrul Jigmey Namkha trained many practitioners learned in not only the Bön religion, but in all Tibetan Schools. However, with the Chinese annexation of Tibet and the Himalayan diaspora, like the other schools, Bön has encountered significant cultural loss. Though, thankfully for the rejuvenation forded by the terma tradition, not irreparable.

According to the Bönpo, eighteen enlightened entities will manifest in this æon and Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche, the founder of Bön, is considered the enlightened Buddha of this age (compare yuga and kalpa). Lopön Tenzin Namdak is an important current lineage holder of Bön.

More than three hundred Bön monasteries had been established in Tibet prior to Chinese annexation. Of these, Menri Monastery and Yungdrung Monastery were the two principal monastic universities for the study and practice of the Bön knowledges and science-arts.

The meaning of Bön
Cultivating heartmind to purify and silence the noise of the mindstream within the bodymind to reveal rigpa, and embody natural bodymind where the obscuration of dualism and dukkha no longer entrance the Bönpo, and sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya are aligned and in sympathetic resonance. Psychoacoustics and ethnomusicology inform this metaphorical usage. Anthropology as well as Himalayan traditions have affirmed that the Bonpo were masters of sound. Singing bowls were fabricated that when filled with water to a demarcated level and resonated, would spout a fountain of water arising in the centre of the bowl. These bowls are termed fountain bowls and are a rare subset of traditional singing bowls.

Pegg (2006) lists the rudimentary instrumentalia that has generally been used in the Himalaya:

"...a small hand-bell (Tibetan dril-bu, Mongol honh) held in the left hand together with the ritual sceptre (Mongol dorje) in the right; thigh-bone trumpets, usually played in pairs for invocation of fierce deities and to signal entry of masked dancers in the 'chams; long, metal bass trumpets and white, end-blown conch-shell trumpets; wooden shawms; and a range of cymbals and double- and single-headed frame drums." (NB: original not meta-enhanced.)

Trance and the energetic use of sound is accompanied by sophisticated possession induced trance dances where the practitioners carry the 'aspect' of the deity or thoughtform, or transform into the yidam, elemental process, dæmon or other somesuch. As Pegg (2006) reports:

The Buddhist chams (Mongol tsam) is a masked Tantric dance-drama performed on public occasions. In Tibet, chams is thought to have developed out of a fusion of Indian Buddhist ritual dance (Tibetan gar), Indian Buddhist theatre and pre-Buddhist Tibetan masked ceremonial dances performed by Bonpo monks and lay men and women ...As Buddhism spread, the structure of the dance-drama remained, though characters were given local interpretations and new ones added. In all chams, movements of dancer-lamas metaphysically create the spheres of heaven, wind, water and fire: the iconographic details of the Mandala. Dancer-lamas invoke and embody Tantric deities for those spheres together with their retinues; malevolent spirits, also created and invited, are forced to enter a human effigy known as a torma (Tibetan linga; c/f Sanskrit 'lingam) ' previously made of dough, wax or paper and then magically destroyed; and parts of the ‘corpse’, i.e. the dead bodies of the spirits, are offered to the deities of the Mandala.

Pegg (2006) informs us that in the Himalayan region:

"Prior to the 13th century, male and female shamans were believed to have equal powers as Protector and Guardian Spirits. During the period of the Mongol Empire (1206–1368), shamans were powerful political as well as spiritual advisors. Books, manuals and manuscripts on rites, ancestor worship, temple ceremonies, chiromancy, scapulimancy, dreams, prayers, hymns and the hagiography of ‘Great Shamans and Shamanesses’ were destroyed by Buddhists from the 16th century to the 19th and many of their practices and beliefs assimilated...In contemporary practice, female shamans continue to be viewed as powerful. The practitioner's performance is oral and is dramatized and improvised according to whether the ceremony is for healing, advice on hunting or divination. In contrast to Eliade's archetypal male shaman who engaged in ‘magical flight’, male or female practitioners may choose to enter dissociated or semi-dissociated states. They employ a range of vocal and instrumental sounds while shamanizing and use their own distinctive melodies for invoking spirits and for rendering the spirit's advice. Percussive non-vocal and non-instrumental sounds are produced by small bells and miniature metal weapons or pins attached to the shaman's drum, staff, switch, rattle, drumstick and costume...The shaman may leap, spin, imitate riding and walking, or appear to dance or embody particular birds or animals. (NB: original not meta-enhanced.)

Though the aforementioned quotation is referencing Inner Asian shamanism, it is here used evocatively to reconstruct and contextualise the system-reticulum of which the Bönpo were an integral element.

Geography and Bon
Tibet is not confined culturally to modern political Tibet. The broader area of ethnic Tibet also includes to the east, parts of the Chinese provinces of Szechwuan, Kansu and Yunnan; to the west, the now Indian regions of Ladakh, Lahul and Spiti; to the south, Bhutan, Sikkim, parts of northern Nepal, the Sherpa and Tamang regions of eastern Nepal and the extreme north-west of Assam.

The altitude and vastness of the Tibetan Region is striking. A landscape uncrompromisingly dominated by mountains and sky, where the starkness of the human condition relentlessly tested the mettle of its peoples. Within such an environment the immensity of the forces of nature and their quixotic and capricious nature of benevolence and malevolence is starkly apparent. Such natural and elemental forces were personified as deities and daemons as most indigenous communities have done. The region is of comparable size to Western Europe and is "...encircled and criss-crossed by mountains that [are] known to Tibetans as 'the Land of Snows' (Bod)". The lofty Tibetan Plateau and Geography of Tibet has had a profound effect on the Bonpo and the shaping of Vajrayana in general. Many of the local deities(jik ten pa) pre-dating Buddhist arrival, were co-opted and made 'protectors' of the Vajrayana and various teachings:

"The Tibetan legends testify to an inseparable sacred connection between the land of Tibet and its peoples that pre-dates the arrival of Buddhism. Of course many of these attitudes and ideas would later find themselves placed in a Buddhist context and given significance within a Buddhist doctrinal framework. Pre-Buddhist gods of mountains and rocks (dre, trin, tsen) were thus described as ‘worldly gods’(jik ten pa) who allowed themselves to be converted to ‘Protectors’ or ’Defenders’ of the Dharma (the Buddhist teaching and path) by Padmasambhava the legendary bringer of Buddhism to Tibet in the seventh century. The gods and goddesses were said to possess magical powers and were capable of working miracles. Nevertheless the lay Tibetan practitioner had to remain wary of these gods as they were not always benign. Once the ire of such gods was invoked then their violent nature often succeeded in gaining the upper hand."

Gods of home and hearth
In order to fortify the lived environment and establish a sense of safety and home in such an uncompromising land, in addition to the relationships cultivated with local divinities, relationships with the gods of home and hearth were also cultivated:

"Traditionally in Tibet divine presences or deities would be incorporated into the very construction of the house making it in effect a castle (dzong ka) against the malevolent forces outside of it. The average Tibetan house would have a number of houses or seats (poe khang) for the male god (pho lha) that protects the house. Everyday the man of the house would invoke this god and burn juniper wood and leaves to placate him. In addition the woman of the house would also have a protecting deity (phuk lha) whose seat could be found within the kitchen usually at the top of the pole that supported the roof." [4]

Historical phases of Bön
According to the Bönpo themselves, the Bön religion has actually gone through three distinct phases: Animistic Bön, Yungdrung or Eternal Bön, and New Bön.

Animistic Bön
The first phase of Bön was grounded in animistic and shamanistic practices and corresponds to the general characterization of Bön as described by the first wave of western scholars. Initiation rituals and rites closely correlate to the indigenous shamanic traditions of Siberia. Many Bönpo shaman were members of a clan-guild from which the volume of shaman came. Shaman were of either gender. A shamanic aspirant with appropriate energetic constitution was often visited, and possessed by, either an ancestral shaman and/or one or more of any number of entities, such as: gods, elementals, dæmons or spirits (in contrast to non-Eastern shaman, oft-engaged in vision quests and work principally with allies) and driven into divine madness. After the newly possessed shaman returns, they are taught by senior practitioners and members of the clan-guild how to deal in a position of power with the spirits that visit them, as well as incantation of mantra.[5]

Yungdrung Bön
The second wave is the contentious phase, which rests on the assertions of the Bönpo texts and traditions (which are extensive and only now being analyzed in the West). These texts assert that Yungdrung Bön was founded by the Buddha Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche. He discovered the methods of attaining enlightenment and is considered to be a figure analogous to Gautama Buddha. He was said to have lived 18,000 years ago in the land of Olmo Lung Ring (or Shambhala), part of the land of Tagzig (refer the conflated Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring) to the west of present day Tibet (which some scholars identify with the Persian Tajik). According to Buddhist legend, prior to the manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha there were numerous other historical Buddhas. Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche transmitted the lore (similar in many regards to Buddhism) to the people of the Zhangzhung of western Tibet who had previously been practicing animistic Bön, thus establishing Yungdrung ("eternal") Bön.

Abbot of a Bön Monastery in Nepal - Lopön Tenzin NamdakThe most delectable premise (countered by most Himalayan scholars) is that Buddhism may have arrived in Tibet by a path other than directly from northwest India. A transmission through Persia prior to the 7th century is not improbable as Alexander the Great had connected Greece with India almost a millennium prior, resulting in a flourishing Greco-Buddhist art style in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 6th century Khosrau I of Persia is known to have ordered the translation of the Buddhist jataka tales into the Persian language. The Silk Road, the path by which Buddhism traveled to China in 67 CE., lies entirely to the west of Tibet and passed through the Persian city of Hamadan. Recently, Buddhist structures have been discovered in far western Tibet that have been dated to the third century CE. Bönpo stupas have also been discovered as far west as Afghanistan. Nonetheless, no scholars have yet identified a major center of Buddhist learning in Persia which corresponds to the Bönpos' land of Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring. Alternative proposed sites have included the ancient cities of Merv, Khotan or Balkh, all of which had thriving Buddhist communities active in the correct timeframe and are located to the west of Tibet.

Leaving aside the speculation on Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring, what can we say about the other Bön claims? The existence of the Zhangzhung culture is supported by many lines of evidence, including the existence of a remnant of living Shangshung speakers still found in Himachal Pradesh. The claim that Lord Shenrab was born 180 centuries ago is generally not taken literally, but understood as an allusion to a master born in the very distant past. One interesting question relating to the history of Bön is: when did Bön really enter the Yungdrung phase, that is, when did elements strongly resembling Buddhism become important? These elements became apparent with the codification of the Yungdrung Bön canon by the first abbot of Menri Monastery, Nyame Sherab Gyaltsen, in the 14th century, but this trend probably began earlier. At the same time, the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Sakya orders of Buddhism were also reorganizing themselves in order to be able to compete effectively with the dominant, Gelug order.

Even if we do not accept the Bön claim that Bön's Buddhist elements are older than the (Indian, historical) Buddha, we may consider some other milestones in Tibetan history which may mark points at which Buddhist ideas became integrated into Bön.

In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo assassinates King Ligmicha of the Shangshung and annexes the Shangshung kingdom. The same Songtsen Gampo is also the first Tibetan king to marry a Buddhist (or, in his case, two): in 632, Nepalese princess Bhrikuti, and in 641, Princess Wencheng, daughter of Emperor Tang Taizong of Tang Dynasty China (where Buddhism is approaching its zenith). Both Tibetan and Bön history agree that King Songtsen Gampo decides to follow Bön, despite his marriages. The nature of the Bön practiced by him and his court is not very clear.
Approximately 130 years later, King Trisong Detsen (742-797) holds a debate contest between Bön priests and Buddhists, and decides to convert to Buddhism; in 779, he invites the great Indian saint Padmasambhava to bring Tantric Buddhism to Tibet. According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the arrival of Padmasambhava represents the First Transmission of the faith. Tantric Buddhism becomes important in Tibet, at this point.
As Tantric Buddhism becomes the state religion of Tibet, Bön faces persecution, forcing Bönpo masters such as Drenpa Namkha underground. It is, however, possible that several decades later, with the collapse of the Tibetan Empire into civil war in 842, Bön may have experienced a partial revival in some districts, especially in western Tibet.
In the 11th century, approximately coincident with the Second Transmission of Tantric Buddhism into Tibet associated with Indian saints such as Atisha and Naropa, we start to find more Bönpo texts, discovered as terma.

New Bön
The "New Bön" phase emerges in the 14th century, when some Bön teachers discovered termas related to Padmasambhava. New Bön is primarily practiced in the eastern regions of Amdo and Kham. Although the practices of New Bön vary to some extent from Yungdrung Bön, the practitioners of New Bön still honor the Abbot of Menri Monastery as the leader of their tradition.

The present situation of Bön
According to a recent Chinese census, presently about 10 percent of Tibetans are estimated to follow Bön. At the time of the communist takeover in Tibet, there were approximately 300 Bön monasteries in Tibet and western China. According to a recent survey, there are 264 active Bön monasteries, convents, and hermitages.

The present spiritual head of the Bön is Lungtok Tenpa'i Nyima (b. 1929), the thirty-third Abbot of Menri Monastery (destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, but now being rebuilt), who now presides over Pal Shen-ten Menri Ling in Dolanji in Himachal Pradesh, India, for the abbacy of which monastery he was selected in 1969.

A number of Bön establishments also exist in Nepal; the most accessible is probably Triten Norbutse Bönpo Monastery, on the Western outskirts of Kathmandu. In Kathmandu, go to the bus stop on the Ring Road nearest Swayambhu (downhill just behind the great stupa.) Follow the Ring Road about 500 meters northeast in the direction of Balaju. Turn left at the small village called Baraing, and follow the dirt road through the rice fields to the red colored monastery, situated on the side of the mountain, a little lower than the Swayambhu Stupa. (It is not the monastery on the top of the mountain.) The Monastery is clearly visible from the Ring Road. Visitors are welcome.

Bön spiritual practices
Bön, while now very similar to schools of Tibetan Buddhism, may be distinguished by certain characteristics:

The origin of the Bönpo lineage is traced to Buddha Tönpa Shenrab (sTon pa gShen rab), rather than to Buddha Shakyamuni.
Bönpo circumambulate chortens or other venerated structures counter-clockwise (i.e., with the left shoulder toward the object), rather than clockwise (as Buddhists do).
Bönpos use the yungdrung (g.yung drung or sauwastika ~ a vrddhi derivation of the swastika) instead of the dorje (rdo rje, vajra) as a symbol and ritual implement.
Instead of a bell, Bönpos use the shang, a cymbal-like instrument with a "clapper" usually made of animal horn, in their rituals.
A nine-way path is described in Bön, which is distinct from the nine-yana (-vehicle) system of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Bönpo consider Bön to be a superset of Buddhist paths. (The Bönpo divide their teachings in a mostly familiar way: Causal Vehicle, Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen).
The Bönpo textual canon includes rites to pacify spirits, influence the weather, heal people through spiritual means, and other "shamanic" practices. While many of these practices are also common in some form in Tibetan Buddhism (and mark a distinction between Tibetan and other forms of Buddhism), they are actually included within the recognized Bön canon (under the causal vehicle), rather than in Buddhist texts.
Bönpo have some sacred texts, of neither Sanskrit nor Tibetan origin, which include some sections written in the ancient Zhangzhung language.
The Bönpo mythic universe includes the Mountain of Nine Swastikas and the Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring paradise.
The Bönpo school is said to resemble most closely the Nyingma school, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, which traces its lineage to the First Transmission of Buddhism into Tibet.

Elements in Bön
In Bön, the five elemental processes of: earth, water, fire, air and space are the essential stuff of all existent phenomena or aggregates (ref. Skandha). The elemental processes form the basis of the calendar, astrology, medicine, psychology and are the foundation of the spiritual traditions of shamanism, tantra and Dzogchen.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (2002: p.1) comprehensively states:

"...physical properties are assigned to the elements: earth is solidity; water is cohesion; fire is temperature; air is motion; and space is the spatial dimension that accommodates the other four active elements. In addition, the elements are correlated to different emotions, temperaments, directions, colors, tastes, body types, illnesses, thinking styles, and character. From the five elements arise the five senses and the five fields of sensual experience; the five negative emotions and the five wisdoms; and the five extensions of the body. They are the five primary pranas or vital energies. They are the constituents of every physical, sensual, mental, and spiritual phenomenon." (NB: original quotation not meta-enhanced.)

The names of the elements are analogous to categorised experiential sensations of the natural world. The names are symbolic and key to their inherent qualities and/or modes of action by analogy. In Bön the elemental processes are fundamental metaphors for working with external, internal and secret energetic forces. All five elemental processes in their essential purity are inherent in the mindstream and link the trikaya and are aspects of primordial energy. As Herbert V. Günther (1996: pp. 115-116) rather unfathomably states:

"Thus, bearing in mind that thought struggles incessantly against the treachery of language and that what we observe and describe is the observer himself [sic.], we may nonetheless proceed to investigate the successive phases in our becoming human beings. Throughout these phases, the experience (das Erlebnis) of ourselves as an intensity (imaged and felt as a "god", lha) setting up its own spatiality (imaged and felt as a "house" khang) is present in various intensities of illumination that occur within ourselves as a "temple." A corollary of this Erlebnis is its light character manifesting itself in various "frequencies" or colors. This is to say, since we are beings of light we display this light in a multiplicity of nuances." (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/8240/resources/guenther.html; accessed: Monday January 15, 2007)

In the above block quote the trikaya is encoded as: dharmakaya "god"; sambhogakaya "temple" and nirmanakaya "house".

Reality and chakras in Bön
Chakras, as pranic centers of the body, according to the Tibetan Bön tradition, influence the quality of experience, because movement of prana can not be separated from experience. Each of six major chakras are linked to experiential qualities of one of the six realms of existence.

A modern teacher, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche uses a computer analogy: main chakras are like hard drives. Each hard drive has many files. One of the files is always open in each of the chakras, no matter how "closed" that particular chakra may be. What is displayed by the file shapes experience.

The tsa lung practices such as those embodied in Trul Khor lineages open channels so lung (prana or qi) may move without obstruction. Yogi opens chakras and evokes positive qualities associated with a particular chakra. In the hard drive analogy, the screen is cleared and a file is called up that contains positive, supportive qualities. A seed syllable (Sanskrit bija) is used both as a password that evokes the positive quality and the armor that sustains the quality.

Tantric practice eventually transforms all experience into bliss. The practice liberates from negative conditioning and leads to control over perception and cognition.