The Tradition of Everlasting Bön

The history of the traditions of thought and practice that developed or originated in Tibet provides a rich source for several areas of inquiry in religious studies. Because of the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, many teachers, monks and ordinary Tibetans fled Tibet—most famously the Dalai Lama. Maintaining and propagating lineages of teaching and practice outside Tibet has been a surprising success. (Huston Smith’s 1979 movie about Tibetan Buddhism was titled “Requiem for a Faith,” for example.) It has also enriched and complicated the study of Tibetan traditions.

The establishment of Bön lineages outside Tibet has disclosed a more complex tradition than was previously visible to Western scholars. Bön has been most familiar as the indigenous tradition of Tibet, perhaps with the qualification that what had been a diffuse set of practices and beliefs were given systematic form as a consequence of the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. What may be less familiar is that the Bön tradition developed as a variety of distinguishable lineages, of which “Everlasting Bön” (Yungdrung Bön) is prominent in the present-day. The Tradition of Everlasting Bön: Five Key Texts on Scripture, Tantra, and the Great Perfection provides religious studies scholars access to key texts from one of the important Bön tradition’s canons—a singular contribution to the available information on the Bön tradition.

Translated by J.F. Marc des Jardins , the texts in this anthology represent three different genres: “scriptural/philosophical studies, tantric studies, and meditative practices” (11). The first text, “Magical Key to the Precious Gradual Path and Grounds of the Greater Vehicle,” by Azha Lodrö Gyaltsen (1198–1263), presents the stages of the path from ignorance to awakening, or “realization of the body of the absolute” (16). The next is a tantric text, “The Lore of the Root Tantra, the Precious Universal Gathering,” attributed to Kuntu Zangpo (the manifestation of the absolute in the form of a teacher, 16). Tantras are famously obscure, hence the need for the extended commentary, the “Net of Sunrays: A Commentary on the Root Tantra the Precious Universal Gathering,” attributed to Drenpa Namkha (fl. 8^th century). Next, the “Magic Key that Disentangles the Secret Meaning,” by Sherab Gyaltsen (1356–1415), is an expository work providing details of the tantric systems and practices of the Bön tradition. The final work, “The Practice Manual of the Revelatory Tradition of the Great Perfection from Zhangzhung” by Drutön Gyalwa Yungdrung (1242–1290), offers a complete system of meditative practice in line with the Great Perfection (Dzog chen) systems found in other Tibetan traditions, such as the Nyingma.

De Jardins’ translations are quite clear and readable, avoiding unnecessary technical jargon or “translationese.” For example, the titles of all texts referred to in these works are rendered into English, rather than being presented in Tibetan. The work benefits from the translator’s expertise, not only in terms of translation per se, but also in the scholarly judgments regarding the presentation of this material to a Western, English-speaking readership. Much of the style of the texts may be unfamiliar to readers more accustomed to thinking of religious texts as comprising primarily stories. Instead, these texts are densely doctrinal and scholastic, and not for casual consumption.

The texts translated in this volume will be of use to scholars with a variety of interests— for understanding the conceptual roots of a living tradition, for example, and for the study of interaction between traditions. While Everlasting Bön might be seen as something ancient and exotic, the translator makes its continuing role in the present evident for us—instead of marginalized as minor and therefore irrelevant, it is instead a living tradition that forms an important part of the Tibetan religious culture with adherents active today. These are historically important key texts for a tradition that continues into the present. Being a tradition with a long history of interaction with Buddhism in Tibet, scholars concerned with how traditions have interacted across the longue durée will find much to work with in examining these texts in relation to Tibetan Buddhist works from similar genres.

The work will also appeal to scholars who seek an academic sense of completeness, since the texts contribute to a more complete history of religion in Tibet, filling in some of the lacunae in our knowledge and understanding. Finally, the texts are of antiquarian interest. Some members of the professionalized scholarly community may deride such an interest as amateurism or dilettantism, but it is not an insignificant motivation for study. Indeed, it is an instance of the epistemic virtue of curiosity.

Bön has long been overshadowed in scholarly study by Tibet’s Buddhist traditions, not simply as a consequence of the celebrity of Buddhism in the West, but also because of the ways that religious studies categorizes religious traditions. There is an enduring privileging of “world religions,” defined as traditions that have transcended their natal culture. Originating in the 19^th century as part of the colonialist imposition of Western religious models on the rest of the world, the category implicitly dismisses traditions outside the inner circle of “world religions”—not only Bön, but also Shintō, Native American, African and other religious traditions that are not institutionalized in the way that the “world religions” are.

Additionally, the origins of religious studies in theology gave doctrinal studies centrality, while local, folk, indigenous, lived, or oral traditions were left to the attention of anthropologists, sociologists, or psychologists. This distorts the object of study but is reinforced by the selectivity of the category itself. Despite its dysfunctional character, this categorization remains fundamental to much religious studies scholarship. This collection of texts from the Bön tradition demonstrates the value of studying a tradition that, while still strongly associated with its natal culture, does not qualify to be a member of the select group of world religions.

Richard K. Payne is professor emeritus at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California.

Richard K. Payne

Date Of Review:

February 29, 2024