Bön

Invocation Name for the pre-Buddhist

religious tradition of the Tibetan
Himalayas, especially Zhang Zhung, many
teachings of which were finally absorbed
into Vajrayana.
Practitioners of Bön are called Bön-po.
Bön, previously believed to be a purely
shamanic system of belief as has been
found elsewhere, more and more scholars
have begun to agree with a hitherto
controversial theory that early Bön was
a combination of Himalayan shamanism and
early Buddhist Tantra (before the
arrival of Padmasambhava) and elements
of Mithraism arriving there from 5th
century Persia; along the silk route. As
this is not the place to discuss this in
datail, I refer the reader to chapter 2
of June Campbell's very clear discussion
in her Traveller in Space.
But Bön's independent existence was not
to last long. Only a few centuries
later, the hitherto not highly organized
Bön-po quickly lost ground, and
believers, when Indian Tantric masters
such as Indrabhuti and Padmasambhava
began teaching in Tibet during the 7th
and 8th centuries. Philosophically nor
politically were they able to withstand
the intellectual sophistication and
increasing dominance of the Buddhists.
It took not long, and Buddhism had risen
to the position of state-religion by 779.
By the late 8th century, a movement
known as Reformed Bön had evolved which
claimed as its founder the Master Tönpa
Shenrab, an early, third century shaman
and priest. This new Bön had borrowed
heavily from the Nyingmapa and was now
able to compete with the organized
Buddhist schools and sects; having
evolved a mythic-historical lineage and
written teachings. After the
philosophical debate and magical
competition in 792, allegedly won by the
Vajrayana adepts, the original and
unreformed 'Swastika Bön-po' were banned
from Tibet and the reformed Bön was
grudgingly accepted, by force of
Padmasambhava's decree, as a fringe
religion and allowed to operate in Tibet.
In the centuries to follow, Bön
developed alongside the Nyingma and
sometimes their teachings were almost
similar, each influencing the other. One
of the major texts of Tibetan Buddhism,
the Bardo Thödol, is strongly influenced
by Bön and may even be of Bön origin
with Buddhist overlays. By the 11th
century, this new Bön had gained some
ground and its teachings have been
transmitted ever since, on a small scale
even into the present time.
Since the late 1980s, Bön-teachers are
also traveling throughout Europe and the
United States in order to make their
cultural and spiritual heritage, now
once more threatened with extinction by
the Chinese occupation of Tibet,
accessible to others. Also the Tibetan
teacher Namkhai Norbu, operating in the
West, is one of the few to carry on some
of these teachings, especially the Bön
mode of Dzogchen.
The approximate date for a first Bön
monastery (gYas-ru dben-sa, founded by
Yungdrun Lama (gYung-drung bla-ma), is
the year 1080.