Talk:Bon

a branch of Tibetan Vajrayana?

"Bon or Bön(Tibetan: བོན་, Wylie: bon [pʰø̃̀(n)]) is a branch of Tibetan Vajrayana." this is strange. If you ask someone who believes in Bon, he won't agree. --Danielinblue (talk) 11:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Shamanic traditions in Tibet

http://www.tibetanresearch.org/Shamanism.htm. I think this has some concise info on Bon. Komitsuki (talk) 14:29, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Opening section makes no sense

The first couple sentences of this article seem to be refuting an argument or viewpoint that hasn't even been introduced. It doesn't make sense to someone unfamiliar with the subject. If there's some dispute over the age of the religion, it should be in the body of the text, not the first paragraph. I don't know enough about the subject to edit this properly but someone should. --109.158.214.140 (talk) 15:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

What is Bon/Bön?

This question should be answered in the very first sentence. Every Wikipedia article should explain what that, which the article is about, is, in its very first sentence. This is in order for the reader to know what it is she is actually reading about, as reading an article about something that you don't know what it is is quite pointless. This article fails to explain what Bön or Bon is (at least as far I have wanted to read), and since it's still a bit unclear to me what it actually is, someone else should probably make the article explain this. —Kri (talk) 20:55, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@Kri, VictoriaGrayson, Ogress, K6ka, Tombreaper, and Danielinblue:

"The term Bön has two different designations in the Tibetan and Bhutanese world when used in reference to a religious tradition. The word Bön is used to refer to the form of religion which is thought to have arrived in Tibet before Buddhism was introduced and which co-existed with Buddhism to some extent after the introduction of Buddhism despite periodic tensions and conflicts between the adherents of the two religions. This Bön was then considered to have been Tibet's old religion. It took a highly institutionalized and Buddhicized form during the time of the Latter Diffusion and exists to this day with very sophisticated doctrinal and practice systems. It shares a great deal of similarity with tthe Buddhist traditions of Tibet and is today often referred to as the fifth religious tradition of Tibet in addition to the four main Buddhist schools. The term Bön is also often employed, inaccurately, to refer to the numerous pre-Buddhist practices across the Himalayas. A wide variety of local rituals and practices found in Bhutan which are shamanistic, animistic or paganistic are often mistakenly branded as Bön for the simple reason of being pre- or non-Buddhist. In this use it designates what R.A. Stein called the 'nameless religion', comprising the diverse folk beliefs found in their localized variations with or without some influence of the institutional Bön and/or Buddhist practices."

Source: Khenpo Dr.Karma Phuntsho (2013). The History of Bhutan. Nodia: Random House India. pp. 135–136. ISBN 9788184003116.

Chris Fynn (talk) 09:42, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

"Bon is one of the pre-Buddhist religions in Tibet. By the term 'pre-Buddhist' here I mean that it existed in Tibet before Buddhism was imported into the area and that it has survived till the present time. Although various definitions of Bon have been proposed, it could be properly said that, in Bonpo culture, we perceive something essential or basic, that has pervaded Tibetan culture from ancient times to the present day. Bon is therefore an important cultural substratum in Tibet."

Source: Yasuhiko Nagano (2003). "A Survey of Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibet and the Himalaya". Tibetan & Himalayan Library. National Museum of Ethnology. {{cite web}}: |chapter= ignored (help)

Chris Fynn (talk) 11:18, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Geoffrey Samuel says:

"The term Bön and its derivative Bönpo have been employed by many Tibetan and Western scholars to refer variously to all sorts of allegedly pre-Buddhist and non-Buddhist elements of Tibetan religion, often including the folk-religion cults of local deities...Such usage conflates so many different things under the one label that serious analysis becomes impossible...While there are some grounds for using the term Bön for the early religion of Tibet, there are few for applying it to the cults of local gods and spirits as they exist today, and I shall avoid using Bön to refer to this contemporary 'folk religion'...The religious order of Bön...is similar in form and nature to the religious orders of Tibetan Buddhism, but claims to derive from the teachings of the pre-Buddhist master Shenrab Mibo rather than historical Buddha Śākyamuni. This modern Bön religion has shamanic and clerical aspects similar to those of modern Tibetan Buddhism....Tibetan folk-religion, then, is 'shamanic', in my sense, but it is to be distinguished from the shamanic aspects of Tibetan Buddhism (and also of the modern Bön religion, which is essentially, in this context, a variant of Buddhism)." - Geoffrey Samuel (1993), Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, pp. 10-12.

This quote shows that the modern religious sect of Bön is virtually a sect of Tibetan Buddhism, but describing Bön as a sect of Buddhism is simplistic interpretation. Tombreaper (talk) 12:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it's misleading to say that Bon is "a sect of Tibetan Buddhism". Its adherents do not self-identify as a sect of Tibetan Buddhism, do they? I understand that current scholarship disputes Bon claims of preceding Tibetan Buddhism. But to say that Bon arose as an identifiable tradition contemporaneously with the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet, and shared many traits with Buddhism, is quite different from saying it is a sect of Buddhism. Bertport (talk) 03:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I stand for Bertport's opinion. "A sect of Tibetan Buddhism" is not proper definition of Bon, but a western scholarly interpretation of the existing religious order of the self-proclaimed "Yungdrung Bon".--Tombreaper (talk) 21:07, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

@Bertport and Tombreaper: The Dalai Lama has written: "if we look from the point of view of the original stock of teachings that are at its core, we have to say that Bön is a separate tradition from Buddhism. We cannot consider it one of the Buddhist traditions since then it would need a traceable Buddhist source." - Tenzin Gyatsho, Dalai Lama XIV. "The Gelug / Kagyü Tradition of Mahamudra". p. 228. Chris Fynn (talk) 15:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Who cares about the Dalai Lama's opinion? The Dalai Lama, like all lamas, believes that terma history is actual history. When its not.VictoriaGrayson^Talk 15:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Gods

It said in the article that, the chief gods the White Old Man and his consort. I've read on other sites, regarding Bon, that their chief deity is a mother goddess named 'Yum.'--Splashen (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Bon/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This article is becoming worse and worse. It contains lots of irrelevant material, marginally relevant material, unusual spelling etc. Menmo (talk) 19:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 14:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC). Substituted at 10:01, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Theology?

The article is missing notes on the theological doctrine of Bon, which I feel is a must-have for any article concerning religion. The Verified Cactus 100% 22:38, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

@VerifiedCactus: As mentioned in the article, Bon shares a lot of overlap with the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet. Theology proper is not really much of a concern in Buddhism unless you use it very broadly to speak about any supernatural persons. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:12, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I see, thanks. The Verified Cactus 100% 13:29, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

New Edits

Made extensive edits to the opening paragraph, as it was misleading and poorly sourced. I also moved the definitions section to the top and filled it out with scholarly sources. 2607:F2C0:9379:4E00:48FF:46B6:8BF8:879F (talk) 01:37, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

History section

The article is missing all mention of the religion prior to what is termed "rediscovery". Since it precedes the arrival of Buddhism I expect to read about this time period, its relationship with Buddhism, the conversion of Tibet and how the religions coexisted/not coexisted. Right now, it reads as though someone discovered an ancient religion in the late Middle Ages, which does not sound right. 134.100.201.250 (talk) 12:55, 30 June 2020 (UTC)