Thank you so much for this article!

One vector for ancient links is at Dunhuang itself, where Buddhists and Daoists, Han and non, engaged in these traditions in very close proximity. I’m familiar rather well with the Buddho-Daoist dialogs regarding 觀 texts during the Tang; several Daoist scriptures were used as the basis for Buddhist ones and vice versa. But I’ve not yet read an exhaustive study of this, especially as it relates to cultural diffusion out of the northwest. Surely this must have been a major site where Tantrayana and Daoism interacted, as they did throughout China in the Tang-Yuan timerange.

Undiscussed in this page is the southwestern vector, through Yunnan and Sichuan, both deeply liminal cultural realms which have long been Daoism’s heartland. Daoist engagements with Yunnan minority shamanisms are longstanding and ongoing projects. It’s known that at least in the case of the Naxi religion of Dongba, regarded as a non-Tibetan branch of Bon, that minority Daoists work in close quarter there. Is any reader aware of scholarly work in this area? The potential of Bon-Daoist eccumenism is tantalizing and bears some investigation, both historically and for future allignment…

It’s delightful to read the story of this debate from the other side! I’m not Quanzhen, but of the Shenxiao sect, so these events are less immediate, but in Daoist circles generally, this debate is portrayed as a sham, a drumhead court instigated by Buddhists threatened by the Quanzhen familiarity with the court. (That the Daoist party to the debate is unnamed certainly underscores to me that the actor named may have been a Daoist straw man set up by Phagpa.) The expansion of Quanzhen Dao during this time can not be underestimated. What is not discussed above is that Quanzhen Dao had made not only a concerted effort to win favour at court, but that there was (and is) an effort to evangelize the Mongols. The so-called Daoist deprivations in taking over small Buddhist sites sound to Daoists like sour grapes due to widespread, ongoing conversions to Quanzhen Dao. Missions to Inner Mongolia are ongoing, but at that time may have been a serious threat to the Buddhist consensus in central Asia. Ask any Quanzhen Daoist about these events today, and they are liable to shrug the “debate”, but tell you the story of how Saint Qiu Chuji softened the Khan’s heart, saving China by journeying north to the purpose of explaining Daoist doctrine. I’ve frequently heard this, that Changchunzi saved China from the Mongols…

Regarding the identification of Quanzhen with Samkhya, this is a very canny observation by Phagpa, and is an argument for this “debate” being something more than a witchhunt. He was obviously read up on Quanzhen Daoist thought, though seems to misunderstand that Daoists regard dualism as complementary and only relevant in the conditional realm. This Samkhya school’s self and matter dialectic sound much like that of the inner nature (性) and destiny (命) theories which are important to Quanzhen. What Buddhists often misapprehend as they engage Daoism is that it’s inappropriate to characterize it in the place of Vedic religion’s affirmation of self. In this case, I can anticipate that Phagpa would have charged the Quanzhen debator with saying the refinement of destiny into inner nature reifies the self. He may also have figured 重玄宗 thought, surely still important to the early Quanzhen, which seeks to refine mind into spirit, body into form, as Samkhya. Both figurings would have ignored the Daoist understanding of the Dao existing as both empty and being, of which inner nature primarily participates with emptiness through transformation (化). As Daoists do not reject contingent, karmic reality, but acknowledge that it is merely congealed out of higher energies, this life affirming stance (even in light of our own native understandings of emptiness) would surely have confused Phagpa, as they often confuse Buddhists today. Daoism is actually a transformational tradition, not a renunciate one. The vinagre tastes good. Thus among the Buddhisms, Daoism typically is especially open to engaging Vajrayana, at least in exoteric tantra. Thankfully the status quo in Buddho-Daoist relations have been more peaceful since the early days of the Yuan dynasty!

About the Huahu Jing, this was of course viewed as polemical by Buddhists. No doubt it was used such, and thus its frequent banning was understandable. However, from a Daoist perspective, the efforts of Most High Lord Lao in evangelizing the barbarians thus has also been seen as a hopeful bridge to eccumenism. As Shijkyamouni Buddha was an avatar of Yin Xi, it was enjoined that Buddhism was a holy teaching. This was represents Daoist correspondence or homology, the process of fluid identification that allowed Buddhism to be “read” in Daoist understandings. (Example: Thus we can read the Heart Sutra, glossing the Buddhist nomenclature as correspondences of Daoist ones.) It’s often misunderstood by Buddhists that this form of interpretatio is necessary in the Daoist worldview and has more contributed to eccumenism than it has been used by the likes of the Three Wu emperors to persecute. The Chinese Three Teachings eccumenism could not have succeeded if this kind of correspondence had not been a precursor. Fundementalist Daoisms are much rarer than they otherwise would be without this kind of ontological innoculation.

Fascinating discussion, thanks for posting this online. Please let me know of studies on Daoist influence on Buddhism and Tibet, as well as Bon-Daoist interaction.

敬祝道安。

http://tinyurl.com/agmpgv

It’s by Hoong Teik Toh of the Academia Sinica, and has the title, “Ch. Qiong ~ Tib. Khyung; Taoism ~ Bonpo — Some Questions Related to Early Ethno-Religious History in Sichuan.” It only costs 10 dollar, so maybe we should order a copy. I haven’t seen it yet.

Sino-Platonic papers are listed here:

http://www.sino-platonic.org/

It’s no. 146 in the list. Some of these titles may be downloaded as PDFs for free.

I haven’t heard of any such studies. There are interesting things going on at the places where Tibetans touch on and intermingle with other nationalities. There are some ‘shared’ pilgrimage sites, in which each pilgrim sees things relevant to his or her own religion, while largely ‘missing’ the significance of the same sites to other religions. (Omei Shan, Wutai Shan, Shar Dung-ri in Amdo, etc.) I see possibilities for influences under these circumstances. Daoists see the Kunlun Mountains that frame the northern Changtang as a very holy place. So we could say that there are some Daoist holy places in Tibet, and some Bön holy places in China.

Or to attack the question in a different way. Yes, very many Bön sources do believe that they represent a broad international religious movement in rather ancient times that ended up influencing religions all over Asia.
There is one Bön scripture (the only one directly used by Thu’u-bkwan in writing, in 1801, his famous anti-Bon polemic) called the Rdzong-’phrang that was actually rediscovered by an unknown tertön in China that tells about a conference of ancient Bönpo stages from practically every country of Asia during those times, including Zhangzhung, Khotan, Persia, India, China, etc. This is just one example of such a text out of very many.

There are lots of studies of Buddhist influences on Daoism, of course. But no, none concerning Bön (or even of Tibetan Buddhist) influences on Daoism as far as I know. Do you know of any? Will you write one?

Yours,
Dan

I don’t think it’s especially likely that Daoism, even much less than Confucianism, had much impact on Tibetan culture at any point in history. But I do think somewhere far in the prehistoric past there were certain areal (perhaps also arial?) religious phenomena that were broadly shared in that general part of the world… that could go on to feed into and influence the area’s religions.

What do you think?

Anyway its interesting that in the Sutra of the Eight Manifestations (tib. Snang brgyad, chi. Bawang jing), which was translated into Tibetan from Chinese, the Chinese word for non-Buddhist sorcerors, xie shi was translated with bon po. I’m just paraphrasing Stein’s Tibetica Antiqua I here (see pp.163, 171). Does this mean anything more than that the early Tibetan Buddhists called all heretics ‘Bonpo’? And could this xie shi possibly be behind the Tibetan word Zin-shing?

I seem to be in the mood for questions today. Don’t feel you have to answer any of them.

(By the way, the translation of xie shi with bon po is only found in the Dunhuang versions, of which there are many. The relevant entry in the Dalton/van Schaik catalogue is here.)