A Corpus Note, Not a Prayer

This entry records that Bon, the indigenous religious tradition of Tibet that predates and later developed alongside Tibetan Buddhism, maintains an extensive tradition of ritual prayer, chant and invocation, without presenting that material itself. Scholars of Tibetan religion describe Bon as possessing its own canon of scripture, its own monastic institutions structurally parallel in many respects to Tibetan Buddhist monasticism, and its own liturgical traditions addressed to its own pantheon of deities and protective spirits, developed and transmitted across many centuries partly independently of and partly in dynamic exchange with Tibetan Buddhism, with which it shares considerable historical influence in both directions.

Much of Bon's specific ritual and liturgical content, like a great deal of Tibetan Buddhist tantric material, is understood within the tradition as requiring proper initiation and qualified teacher transmission before it can be appropriately practiced or even studied in detail, a structure of restricted transmission common to Tibetan religious traditions generally rather than unique to Bon specifically. This entry accordingly limits itself to recording the existence and general character of Bon prayer practice rather than reproducing or summarizing specific liturgical texts that Bon tradition itself treats as requiring initiatory context.