Bon - Classification of Ways

What is remarkable about the 'Nine Ways of Bon' is the succint manner in which they resume the whole range of Tibetan religious practices:

• methods of prediction
  to which Tibetans of all religious orders and of all ranks of society are addicted
• placating and repelling local divinities of all kinds

of whose existence all Tibetans, lay and religious, are equally convinced
• destroying enemies by fierce tantric rites
  practices in which Buddhists and bonpos are equally interested
• guiding the consciousness through the 'Intermediate State'
  powers claimed equally by the older orders of Tibetan Buddhism and by the bonpos
• moral discipline of devout believers and strict discipline of monastic orders
  ways that have followers in all orders of Tibetan religion
• tantric theory and ritual
  fundamental to the iconography and the worship of all Tibetan religious communities
• tales of perfected wonder-working sages
  typical again of the older orders of Tibetan Buddhism as well as bonpos.

All that is missing out of this list is the religious life of academic learning which is now typical of educated monks of the dGe-lugs-pa ('Yellow Hat') order. This is only omitted because when the list of 'Nine Ways' was elaborated, the dGe-lugs-pa way had not yet come into existence. But nowadays the bonpos have this, too, with their scholars of philosophy and logic and their academic honours and titles. Nor are they just dresses in other's plume. They really have developed the practices of all these diverse ways over the last thirteen centuries or so, and they have produced a very large literature of their own in support of all the various ways of their practice. Much of this literature, e.g. some of their sutras and especially the 'Perfection of Wisdom' teachings, has been copied quite shamelessly from the Buddhists but by far the greater part would seem to have been absorbed through learning and then retold, and this is not just plagiarism.

In classing the four lower ways as 'Bon of cause' and the five higher ways as 'Bon of effect', they were trying sincerely to relate the old ways of magic ritual to the new ways of morality and meditation. If one practices even the rites of the 1st Way intent on the 'Thought of Enlightenment', benefit will come to all living beings. Likewise the 2nd Way is something for delighting living beings with benefits and happines, but it is important to have as basis the raising of one's thought (to enlightenment). The 3rd Way, if practised properly, reaches out towards the 8th Way, achieving the effect where Method and Wisdom are indivisible. The practiser of the 4th Way, concerned as he is with rescuing others who wander in the 'Intermediate State', is effectively preparing himself for Buddhahood.

Conversely, the rites of the lower ways are still indispensable even when one has reached the higher ones. 'Fertile fields and good harvest, extent of royal powers and spread of dominion, although some half (of such effects) is ordained by previous actions (viz. Karmic effext), the other half comes from the powerful „lords of the soil"- so you must attend to the „lords of the soil", the serpents and the furies'.

Now every Tibetan, whatever religious order, believes this, but -to my knowledge- only the bonpos have formulated this belief as doctrine.