This evening I have been asked to speak about the Bon tradition
and its relation to Buddhism. When His {H.} the {D.} Lama speaks of
the Tibetan traditions, he often refers to the five traditions of
Tibet: the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug and Bon. From His {H.}'
point of view, Bon has an equal place with the four Tibetan
Buddhist lineages. His {H.} is very broadminded. Not everybody has
agreed with such a stance. There have been and still are a lot of
very strange ideas about Bon amongst Buddhist teachers. From the
Western psychological point of view, when people are trying very
hard to emphasize positive things in their personalities before
they have really resolved things on a deep level, then the shadow
side gets projected onto an enemy. "We are the good guys on a
proper pure path and they are the devil." Unfortunately, the Bonpos
have been the traditional objects of this projection in Tibetan
history. We will look at the historical reasons for this. It
definitely needs to be understood within the context of Tibetan
political history.
It is just a fact that Bon has received a lot of negative
publicity and a bad image within Tibet itself. Westerners are often
attracted to controversy, as if something that receives a bad image
is more interesting. The other traditions are boring and straight.
An equally strange idea is that Bon is more exotic than Tibetan
Buddhism. Some Westerners look at it as a place where they can find
magic, Lobsang Rampa type of stuff like drilling a hole in people's
foreheads to open their third eyes. Neither view is accurate. We
need to try to get a more balanced perspective and look at Bon with
respect, as His {H.} does. It is important to understand Tibetan
history to see how a negative view of Bon has developed and to see
how its approach to spiritual development relates to Tibetan
Buddhism.
According to the Bon tradition itself, it was founded by Shenrab
Miwo, who lived thirty thousand years ago. That would place him
somewhere in the Stone Age. I don't think this means he was a
caveman. A common way to show great respect to a lineage is to say
it is ancient. The actual dates of his lifespan are not possible to
prove in any case. Shenrab Miwo lived in Omolungring. The
description of this place seems to be a mixture of ideas about
Shambhala, Mt. Meru, and Mt. Kailash. It is the description of an
ideal spiritual land. It was said to be within a larger area called
Tazig. The word "Tazig" can be found both in Persian and Arabic to
refer to either Persia or Arabia. In other contexts, it refers to a
nomadic tribe. In the Bon tradition, Tazig is described as being to
the west of the kingdom of Zhang-zhung, which was in Western
Tibet.
This suggests that Bon came from Central Asia, and probably an
Iranian cultural area. It is possible that Shenrab Miwo lived in an
ancient Iranian culture and then came to Zhang-zhung. Some versions
say he came sometime between the eleventh and seventh centuries
B.C.E. That is also a very long time ago and, again, there is no
way of proving one or the other position. What is clear is that by
the time of the founding of the Yarlung Dynasty in Central Tibet
(127 B.C.E.) there was already something of a native tradition. We
do not even know what it was called at that time.