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Chapter 08
Bon Po Religion
question of the historical origins of Dzogchen. [Excerpted from Space, Awareness, and Energy: An Introduction to the Bon Po Dzogchen Teachings of the Oral Tradition from Zhang Zhung, by John Myrdhin Reynolds, Snow Lion Publications forthcoming in 2001.] Notes: 1. See John Myrdhin Reynolds, The Golden Letters, Snow Lion, Ithaca 1996, pp. 199-286. 2. For example, see the Deb-ther sngon-po of Gos lo-tswa-ba gZhon-nu dpal (1392-1481),
translated in The Blue Annals by George Roerich, Part I, Book I, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi reprint 1979; pp. 35-37. See also Tarthang Tulku, Ancient Tibet, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley 1986; pp. 102-106, 140-148. See Geza Uray, "The Old Tibetan Verb Bon," in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae, 1964, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 323-34. Shamanism, now recognized to be a world-wide religious and cultural activity of great antiquity, has been extensively described by Russian and other anthropologists, as well as by scholars of the History of Religions such as Mircea Eliade and others. See especially Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Pantheon Books, New York 1964. On Tibetan shamanism generally, see Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet, Mouton, The Hague 1956, pp. 538-553, as well as Per-Arne Berglie, "Preliminary Remarks on Some Tibetan Spirit Mediums in Nepal," in Kailash 4 (1), Kathmandu 1976, pp. 85-108. For an account of a contemporary Tibetan shaman from Ladakh and practicing in Kathmandu, see Larry G. Peters, "The Tibetan Healing Rituals of Dorje Yudronma: A Fierce Manifestation of the Feminine Cosmic Force," in Shaman's Drum 45, Ashland OR 1997, pp. 36-47. See Joseph Rock, "Contributions to the Shamanism of the Tibetan-Chinese Borderland",
Anthropos LIV (1959), pp. 796-818 7. See Larry Peters, Ecstasy and Healing in Nepal, Udena Publications, Malibu 1981. See also
Stan Royal Mumford, Himalayan Dialogue, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1989. 8. On the relations of the old Tibetan kingdom with Central Asia generally, see Christopher
Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1987. In view of this connection, as suggested by Beckwith, the term bon might possibly be a borrowing from the Central Asian Iranian language of Sogdian, where the word bwn means "dharma." This word also occurs as the first element in the title of the Zoroastrian book dealing with the process of creation, the Bundahishn. Beckwith has also pointed to a possible Indo-Iranian substratum in the Zhang-Zhung language. See Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, op. cit, pp. 3-36. The Sogdians were a major trading people along the Silk Route to the northwest of Tibet and many Buddhist texts in the Sogdian language have been recovered from Central Asia. On Zhang-Zhung in particular, see Tsering Thar,
"The Ancient Zhang-Zhung Civilization," in Tibet Studies, Lhasa 1989, pp. 90-104. 9. According to the bsTan-rtsis of Nyima Tenzin, translated by Per Kvaerne in "A Chronological
Table of the Bon-po: The bsTan rcsis of Nyi-ma bstan-'jin," in Acta Orientalia XXXIII, Copenhagen 1971, pp. 205-282.
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The Bon Po Traditions of Dzogchen
