About Bon and Menri

Early Bon rock images from Upper Tibet
(Iron Age and Early Historical Period (ca. 650-1000 CE) Photos: John Bellezza Notes from the Journal of John Bellezza
(American archeologist, explorer, and longtime visitor to Menri Monastery)

Menri (Medicine Mountain) Monastery is located in the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh, in a rather out of the way corner, far from cities and bazaars. How this place has changed in recent years! From a sleepy, albeit culturally important backwater, Menri has become a bustling hub of religious learning and ritual activity. Until 1998, Menri was a very rudimentary facility with a few simple adobe and stone buildings. Even the main temple was bereft of the rich decorations that have come to characterize Tibetan religious edifices. There were around 100 monks then. Now there are hundreds more, and large concrete Tibetan-style buildings house the new temples, a library, Bon Dialectic school, dormitories, a Tibetan medical university, and the Redna Menling Nunnery, as well as other functioning centers.
The chief lama or Abbot of Menri Monastery is the Gyalwa Menri Trizin--also the titular head of all Bonpo. A typical day will see the Abbot delegating tasks to his circle of leading monks--all of whom hold the Doctor of Divinity or Geshe degree--participating in religious ceremonies, receiving visitors, dictating letters, and supervising construction and educational projects. Around the world, the Bon regard the Gyalwa Menri Trizin as the spiritual beacon for all Bonpo
There are still those who believe that Tibet is synonymous with Buddhism, not realizing that it is home to another of the world's great religions. Fortunately, attitudes are changing as the Bon people reach out to the rest of the world with ever greater vibrancy. In addition to possessing the doctrinal traditions and ecclesiastic structures of Tibetan Buddhism, Bon has preserved a variety of more ancient cultural traditions.

Needless to say, native Bon traditions are of great interest to historians, anthropologists, and archeologists. But they are also highly valuable in a practical sense, for they contain much that is of relevance to human physical and mental well-being. To name but a few of aspects of Bon's indigenous heritage, there are medical therapies, rituals for psychological contentment, systems of divination, and special rites for environmental harmony. This profound pre-Buddhist spiritual bequest draws its inspiration from the primal well-spring of human experience, seen as the universal birthright of us all. The Bonpo believe that the foundation of our human identity has been ignored in the theologies and institutional frameworks of the other major world religions. Often mistakenly equated with shamanism by lay people and poorly-informed religious scholars, the ancient Bon legacy is actually concerned with divinity as it abides in all natural systems. It is held that this divinity or essential state is tantamount to human beings in their fundamental phenomenological form. Known as the "natural state of mind," this view of reality is elucidated in a highly advanced system of teachings known as Dzogchen. Wed to Buddhist cosmological and ethical traditions over the last twelve centuries, Dzogchen is considered the highest of Bon teachings.
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Under the leadership of the Abbot H. H. Menri Trizin, a group of Geshes representing each sector of the monastic and educational community is responsible for the planning, administration, development, and finances at Menri. The democratically- structured YBMC functions, in effect, as the operational office of the Menri complex.

The new Bon nunnery sits across the valley from, and in view of, Menri Monastery. Called Redna Menling or "Land of Precious Medicine," it is the only Bon nunnery in India and only one of a handful in the world. Girls and women from Tibet and the borderlands arrive here to study and remain as nuns in the Bon culture. Redna Menling is a rapidly growing institution that is a solid reflection of women as leaders and practitioners of the Bon tradition.

Menri is a refuge for hundreds of Bon children whose numbers increase each year. The children--some of whom are orphaned--are sent to Menri from poor regions in the borderlands of Tibet and Nepal for their sustenance and education. Boys whose families send them to the monastery are trained as monks. Girls who are placed in the nunnery are trained as nuns. Also within the Menri complex is the Bon Children's Home with dormitories for boys and girls who were sent to Menri for basic care and education.

All children, including the young monks and nuns, attend school together at the Central School for Tibetans. Situated in the valley below the monastery, the school is run by the Indian government and provides education through the tenth grade. Because Bon tradition places such high value on education and on the continuation of the Bon culture and tradition, the school includes a strong component of Bon studies. Education is regarded as an absolute necessity for the future of Bon.