Rainbow Body? BON, Buddhism, or Yoga?

Shakyamuni Buddha? Maitreya Buddha? Padmasambhava Rinpoche? Or Tonpo Shenrab Miwo?

BON or Bön (Tibetan བོན་, Wylie bon, ZYPY Pön, Lhasa dialect [pʰø̃̀]), also known as Yungdrung or "Eternal" Bon (Tibetan གཡུང་དྲུང་བོན་, Wylie gyung drung bon, ZYPY Yungchung Pön), is the indigenous Tibetan religion that shares many similarities and influences with Tibetan Buddhism [1].

It initially developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries [2] but retains elements from earlier pre-Buddhist Tibetan religious traditions [3, 4]. Bon today is a significant minority religion in Tibet, especially in the east, as well as in the surrounding Himalayan regions [1, 4].

The relationship between [shamanic] Bon and Tibetan Buddhism has been a subject of debate. According to the modern scholar Geoffrey Samuel, while Bon is "essentially a variant of Tibetan Buddhism" with many resemblances to Nyingma, it also preserves some genuinely ancient pre-Buddhist elements [1].

David Snellgrove likewise sees Bon as a form of Buddhism, albeit a heterodox kind [5]. Similarly, John Powers writes that "historical evidence indicates that Bön only developed as a self-conscious religious system under the influence of Buddhism" [6].

• [Shamanism, like daily practices in the life of many old cultures, would not have been conceived by laypeople as a systematic "religion." That would be a foreign concept. Superstitions, old-time beliefs, as in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, European paganism and Wicca, the ancient Americas, and pre-Buddhist India before Sri Shankara organized the many diverse belief systems practiced into an "-ism" of the Indus River region, Indus-ism, reaching back to the ancient Vedas as the basis of every kind of belief, and what goes by the general name of "shamanism" in most of the world was never thought of a "religious" identity by people believing or engaging with the world until it came up against a missionary, state, or imperial religion and was forced to see itself as such. So what Powers is saying of Bon would go for many if not all indigenous lifestyles and assumptions about life, or what we are now comfortable to refer to as spiritual practices.]

Followers of Bon, known as "Bonpos" (Wylie bon po), believe that the religion originated in a kingdom called Zhangzhung, located around [holy non-mountain] Mount Kailash in the Himalayas [7].

Bonpos hold that Bon was first brought to Zhangzhung then to Tibet [8]. Bonpos identify the Buddha [here using the term "Buddha" in the Hindu and Mahayana sense of bodhisattva or primordial "god," deva, or brahma rather than in the historical or Early Buddhist sense of "supremely awakened teacher," Pali sammasambuddha] Shenrab Miwo (Wylie gshen rab mi bo), who is reputed to have lived 18,000 years ago, as Bon's founder, although no available sources establish this figure's historicity [9]. More

YOGA or Ashtanga refers to esoteric mental, verbal, and physical practices enumerated and presented as the Eight Limbs of Yoga or "Union" by Sri Patanjali.

The Secret Teachings of the Rainbow Body

(Asangoham) A story of a Tibetan Buddhist monk (lama) realizing the rainbow body is typical of the phenomenon. For many, particularly in the Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist tradition, the attainment of the rainbow body is real and beyond any doubt.

Many thousands claim to have been firsthand witnesses to the phenomenon. What exactly is the rainbow body? Can anyone achieve it?

Simply put, the rainbow body is a mystical transformation wherein the physical body (stula sharira) dissolves into what is known as a light body (the layers subtler than the material, the sukhma sharira).

This represents the pinnacle of [Tibetan Vajrayana] spiritual evolution and is often [mistakenly] equated with enlightenment. Those who attain the rainbow body are believed to have not only transcended the usual cycle of death and reincarnation (samsara), but to be reborn (which would not happen if they had made an end of samsara) into a higher dimension of existence [in a brahma or deva world].

To many this phenomenon may seem occult, esoteric, obscure, mysterious, or even unheard of; however, it has been recorded in a number of spiritual traditions -- not only in Bon influenced Tibetan Buddhism.

In fact, there are some Christian scholars, such as Father Francis V. Tiso, who argue that Christ’s ascension may have been a case of Jesus attaining the rainbow body.

This video first looks at the phenomenon of the rainbow body as it is understood in Tibetan Buddhism and its first appearance in the religion that predates Tibetan Vajrayana, which is a form of Himalayan shamanism called Bön.

Script: Matt Mackane. Editing: Harsh. Voiceover: Matt Mackane. Music: Original music and Epidemic music.

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• Asangoham, YouTube, Feb. 19, 2024; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit of Bon and Ashtanga