[Editor’s Note: This series is included as a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth .]
The Blending of Bön, Buddhism and the Goddess
Shamanic influenced Stupa, Lugu Lake. Photo. K. Rodin
Much of the literature on the Mosuo and Naxi claims that Bön is the precursor to both the Dongba priests in Lijiang and the dabas around Lugu Lake, yet neither the dongbas nor the dabas belong to a monastic tradition, nor do the dabas have particular temples for worship. Both are more of a mix of earlier Shamanic traditions, pre-Buddhist Bön and some Reformed Bön attributes added, but they are not the Reformed Bön of the Tibetan textual tradition.
The general history of Bön religion can be organized into three major eras corresponding with prominent events in Tibet. The first has been called “Wild Bön or Black Hat Bön” which was the main religion of the legendary Kingdom of Zhangzhung that supposedly stretched from modern day Afghanistan to Sichuan/Yunnan China from ca. 1130 BCE to just prior to the First Han Empire Period, 221 BCE. Bön during this period has been characterized by Western scholars in the 1970s-1980s, including Kvaerne and Snellgrove,[1] as concentrating on fetishism, demon worship, incantations, and blood sacrifice; all of which can relate to typical shamanic rites and rituals. The second phase developed after the revelations of Tonpa Shenrap, who is the Bön equivalent to the Buddha. It is from this time that there was more standardization in ritual practices and the development of a concentrated priesthood with six philosophical schools. The last major period was initiated with the Buddhist yogi, PadmaSambhava who defeated the Bön priest in a race up Mt. Tise, (Kailash), thereby ending the previous power structure of Bön influence in governmental rule as well as in the spiritual affairs of Tibet.
PadmaSambhava’s
reforms sparked the monastic movement with Bön as well as the incorporation of
many Buddhist ideas and practices accompanied by new and ‘rediscovered’ texts
into the religion. This last form of Reformed Bön has much in common with the
earliest form of Tibetan Buddhism, Nyingmapa, which was also initiated by
PadmaSambhava, but differs in that it also incorporates Chinese Turkistan and
Kashmiri Saivite concepts.[2]
(Gurung, 111-113) Most of the early shamanic traditions of the general Tibetan
region, including Black Hat Bön, recognized a Mother Goddess. She was called
Shin mo, Jyamma, or Shri Chenmo depending on the location. There are still nuns
in Muktinath, a famous Bön, Hindu and Buddhist pilgrimage site in the Annapurna
Range in Nepal, who tend the eternal fire and oversee the 108 waterspouts,
i.e., elements of Mother Earth, who are called Jema. The name of the Goddess
Gemu is almost certainly a derivative of the Himalayan Jyamma, Chenmo and Jema.
The early shamanic goddess traditions often used rituals and mantras for
fertility of the land and body. There is no corresponding official Bön or
Buddhist text that supports this practice, and yet in Mosuo tradition two
ceremonies are performed by the daba to protect the unborn child. The first
involves the pregnant woman’s siblings searching out a flourishing fruit tree so
that the tree, aided by the daba, will bless the unborn infant. In the second a
rice image is formed of a particular spirit that could potentially harm the
mother and unborn child, the daba then symbolically kicks the spirit within the
rice image out of the house by throwing stones at it. These are not Reformed
Bön practices, but are common shamanic practices. In Mongolian shamanism, for
example, the shaman or his/her helper creates an image out of grain.
[1] “A Collection of Studies on the Tibetan Bon Tradition,” http://vajrayana.faithweb.com/ACollectionOfStudiesOnBon.pdf
[2] B.C Gurung, Bön in the Himalayas (Kathmandu: Uma Gurung, 2003), 111-13.
(To be continued.)
Meet Mago Contributor, Krista Rodin.