BON - AS A PRE-BUDDHIST RELIGION OF TIBET

Buddhist ideas certainly pervade BON throughout:

• the definition of truth as absoute and realtive (this was a useful idea for the bonpos as it could provide a justification for the lower ways of magic ritual)
• the realization of the 'Thought of Enlightenment' as the coalescence of Method and Wisdom
• the whole conception of living beings revolving through the six spheres of existence
• the notion of buddhahood as fivefold
• the whole gamut of tantric theory and practice

Some might be tempted- when there is still so much else of interest in Tibetan civilization that awaits investigation - to neglect this developed and elaborate BON as mere second-hand Buddhism.

But there have been also serious scholars who conversely would regard Buddhism in Tibet as little more than demonological priestcraft. Waddell's remarkable book, Lamaism, which contains so much precise information about Tibetan Buddhism practices of all kinds, provides evidence enough that Bon and Buddhism in Tibet are in their theories and practices one and the same. What Wadell perhaps failed to appreciate is that Tibetan Buddhism -and for that matter BON too- is often sincerely practised by Tibetans as a moral and spiritual discipline.

We are thus concerned not only with pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion, but with Tibetan religion regarded as one single cultural complex. The bonpos merely pose the problem nicely for us by having arranged all types of Tibetan religious practice within the framework of their 'Nine Ways'. Regarded in this way, BON might be indeed claim to be the true religion of Tibet.

Accepting everything, refusing nothing through the centuries, it is the one all-embracing form of Tibetan religion. Its few remaining educated representatives seem to be still motivated by its spirit.

Western scholars of Tibetan well know how difficult it is to persuade an indigenous Tibetan scholar to take any interst in forms of Tibetan literature that lie outside his particular school. Normally a dGe-lugs-pa ('Yellow Hat') scholar would be ashamed at the idea of reading a work of any other Tibetan Buddhist order, let alone a bonpo work. Yet educated bonpo monks clearly have no such inhibitions. They will learn wherever they can, and given time they will absorb and re-adapt what they have learned.

• The Source of The Nine Ways of Bon
• The Chapters of gZi-brjid
• Remarks on The Chapters, and 9 Ways
• Classifications of Different Ways
• The Way of The Shen of Protection
• Bon as The Pre-Buddhist Religion of Tibet
• How Bon Came To Tibet
• The Four Portals and the Treasury as Fifth