Talk:Bön

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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)

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Contents

[edit] Ngakpa section

This is another section which is not specific to Bon. And seems to confuse Bon, Dzogchen and Tantra. As there is already an entry Ngagpa I delete this section here. --Menmo 21:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reality and Chakras in Bön

This sounds like a duplication of stuff that could be (is?) found in entries on Vajrayana. It is not so specific to Bön. Thus I would be in favour of removing this section. --Menmo 17:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Menmo, I've found it in a book by a Bön teacher. I don't remember seen it in any Buddhist material (maybe you could you provide references?). So, it seems more or less unique and it seems it should stay in the Bön article.--Klimov 18:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
See for example John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, Snow Lion 1995. And I have to admit an uneasy feeling seeing that such edits are made on the base of having seen something in one book. The whole Vajrayana section of en.wikipedia.org seems to develop into an assembly of reproductions of pieces of teachings people have found in books, or maybe sometimes received from a teacher. But Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, not a surrogate for a comprehensive book or library, and certainly not a surrogate for the teachings themselves which need to be transmitted properly. --Menmo 12:14, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello Klimov, you reverted my modifications. Please explain your arguments here. --Menmo 20:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello Menmo, I've reverted your modifications because they were only wholesale deletions. Loss of information, that does not seem constructive or positive.--Klimov 19:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I have already explained, see above, that your input is nothing specific to Bon, it rather belongs to Vajrayana in general. Same is true for Ngagpa. As an answer to this, you have asked for a quotation that this is general Vajrayana. I have provided such a quotation. So please look for the most suitable entry where to put you text and remove it here.
As for the Ngagpa section, besides being not Bon-specific, the text reads: Ngagpas (sNgags-pa) ... are male non-monastic practitioners of Bönpo and Dzogchen. There are several mistakes. Bonpo means Bon practioner, so one can only be a practitioner of Bon and not of Bonpo. And a ngagpa does not need to be a Dzogchen practitioner, he can also be a Tantric practitioner. As there is now a separate entry Ngagpa with the same text (!), so there is really no need for it here and I will delete it (and ask you not to revert). Menmo 20:20, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
It was somebody else who merged the 'Reality' stuff into here. I've written it as a separate article. I didn't object the merge though.
Would you suggest this 'suitable entry'? --Klimov 20:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
What about Tsa Lung? Menmo 18:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that seems to be a possibility. However, it seems to be good if we could somehow emphasize that this is not only relevant to some kind of exercises, but is independent of them, i.e. valid also for beings who don't do any exercises. --Klimov 18:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

Could someone add the IPA pronunciation of "Bön" please? --LakeHMM 02:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, judging from Tibetan Pinyin, bön is apparently pronounced /pʰøn/, although you could probably get away with /bøn/ and maybe that's preferable. Note that bon is also correct, and that is pronounced /bon/ (same as the English "bone"). Actually, I wonder if this article should be moved to bon, which is the older form of the word.—Nat Krause(Talk!) 17:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Tibetan Pinyin is not a good way for determining the pronounciation. The word (bon in Wylie) is pronounced with an umlaut, and the n is nasalised similar to bon in French. As it is actually pronounced with umlaut, I think it's ok to keep the entry as Bön.--Menmo 11:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It's pronounced with an umlaut in modern Lhasa dialect Tibetan. It was pronounced without an umlaut in classical Tibetan. You are correct about the value of the "n" ... I should have said to pronounce it /pʰø̃/ or /bø̃/, although /bøn/ is still a reasonable approximation for someone with an English accent.—Nat Krause(Talk!) 16:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gampo

Does anyone know of a reliable source calling Gampo a Bon practicioner? I believed this as well, and on a recent trip to Tibet I asked this of my tour guide to which she said "that's not true."

Now granted, that was a long time ago and Bon was forced into hiding for a while, but I can't find any mention of this in any articles I collected in my research...scratch that...Berzin Archives mentions something about Gampo continuing Bon burial rituals...but continuing a ritual is one thing while following a different religous tradition is quite another.

Another possibility is the 'gtsug' cult phenomenon that supposedly occurred with kings and court 'nobles' which featured sacrifice...sometimes this was labeled as Bon in the centuries to come. (Per Kvaern...Kvaerne?)

[edit] Lead section

The lead section needs to be shortened. According to the Wikipedia:Lead_section#Length, it should be no more than three or four paragraphs. A Ramachandran 13:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Most of the information in this section is not specific to Bon at all, but are generalisms about central Asian shamanism. In my opinion this section could be eliminated completely. It certainly does not provide a clear introduction to the tradition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.40.126.205 (talk) 00:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

In the original Bon arrival story, Bon was the result of three brothers who, through their compassion, desired to bring the Bon religion to the human realm. The first brother, Dagpa, arrived in the last world age and introduced "the way". This is loosely refered to in current commentaries as the "animistic" or "Black Bon". According to tradition, it was taught as in the God's realm. The purpose of this early Bon is to produce "BonKu" (a class of realized beings later to be called Buddha).

This part of the Bon tradition is commonly referred to, but left out of religious treatment on this topic. This earlier form of Bon survives today and is found across the world in small practice groups led by a Rigdzen (Bonku) or gShen (priest).

Padmagonpo 16:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC) Padma Gonopo Rinpoche

[edit] Sanskrit

Sanskrit terms are used on occasion in this article. I suggest that the either they be excised, or some explanation be added as to how an indigenous Tibetan religion came to employ them. Sylvain1972 20:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)