On the way from the big Buddha statue we passed a Bon Monastery. Its full name is Yung Drung Kundrak Lingbon and it is located in the village of Bakhim near Ravangla [1]. There has not been enough time for a visit. But I could take some photographs from the outside and I take this as an opportunity to tell you something about the Bon Religion.
Externally, the Bon Monastery hardly differs from a Buddhist monastery. But that's probably because Bon and Buddhism have become closely linked and fertilized mutually in Tibet. It is assumed that many of the spirits, demons and similar figures from the Bon pantheon, as well as rituals and dances, have been adopted. One can assume that the Bon religion adopted the monastic structure of Buddhism.
When I visited the royal tombs of the Yarlung rulers in Tibet, more precisely in the Chongye Valley, about 25 years ago, and there I also went to a monastery. An old lama played a drum and recited sutras to the hollow rhythmic beat. The way he looked and the way he was beating the drum with a curved mallet, I figured it must be Bon. I found out later, of course, that it is common practice in all Tibetan monasteries. But this impression of Bon stuck with me. That's why I kept being interested in the Bon religion later on.
Bon developed in Tibet from a Siberian animistic-shamanistic religion, whereby ecstasy techniques, sacrifice and death cult play an important role. Bon dances are also performed – this has certainly left traces in tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet. Mircea Eliade in particular did research on shamanism and ecstasy techniques [3].
The Bon religion, like Buddhism, suffered during the Cultural Revolution. It is believed that nowadays there are 264 active Bon temples and monasteries in Tibet and China. The Dalai Lama recognized Bon as the fifth spiritual school in Tibet in 1977 [4]. As there are only a few Bon [5] monasteries in India, I felt lucky to see this monastery.
Links and Annotations:
[1] https://www.indien-reise.com/german/Bon-Kloster.htm Doutbtful source, as the age of Bon is given as 18,000! You can see the monastery on Google Maps:
https://www.google.de/maps/place/Bon+monastery.+Sog+yungdrung+ling./@27.279591,88.3344422,662m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m7!3m6!1s0x39e699fa66410817:0x2a4b462755f55e69!4b1!8m2!3d27.2923261!4d88.4113135!16s%2Fg%2F11kb1k_scw [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6n
[3]Mircea Eliade: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2004.
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6n The english article is even more elaborated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon
[5] John Bon Jovi has nothing to do with Bon, but if you look into an old travel diary of a trip to Bhutan, you'll see, that he is known in the region: https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2020/09/glimpses-into-bhutan-in-year-2000_8.html
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