The Divinity School is pleased to announce J.F. Marc des Jardins will be giving a public lecture entitled "Tibetan indigenous religions and its eastern neighbor influences: Bön and Daoism, what are the connections?"

May 17, 2023, 4:30pm, Foster 103

In pre-Buddhist Tibet, the religious landscape was varied and ritual practices and beliefs were tied to clans, locality, social strata, economics and politics. When Buddhism came to make advances with the new centralized government of the Land of Snow, local Bonpo intelligentsia began to restructure tenets and ceremonials.  The establishment of Yerubensakha (g-Yas ru dben sa kha) in 1072 marked the beginning of a consolidation movement of Bön religion which integrated loosely related ritual and religious lineages and practices into a new movement self-identified as Everlasting Bön or Yungdrung Bön (g-yung drung bon). Over centuries, up till now, this new school incorporated competing religious trends into its own curriculum. These stimuli came from various sources, many from Buddhism, but others from the periphery, including China in the east. However, the influences from the latter have not been clearly identified until now. This presentation proposes a new ground of inquiries that consists in the study of a corpus of Tibetan bonpo ritual texts that directly connects this tradition with Chinese Daoist lore. This paper will be useful to scholars, students and the general public interested in Chinese popular cults and religions, Daoism, Tibetan religions, and Tibetan Bön.

J.F. Marc des Jardins, PhD, CMD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University in Montreal. He researches religions and cultures along the former Sino-Tibetan borders, studying Tibetan indigenous cults and Chinese ritual practices and beliefs. Trained initially as a Sinologist, he has been engaged in field-based research in Sichuan and Qinghai since 1991, hopping between Chinese-based religious groups (Daoist networks) and Tibetan bonpo communities. His latest research project focuses on the Bön corpus of the Lords of Earthly Planes (sa bdag ’bum) He has lectured and given seminars in international venues since joining Concordia in 2005 and has published widely in scholarly publications. His latest book, namely The Tradition of Everlasting Bön: Five Key Texts on Scripture, Tantra, and the Great Perfection, (Library of Tibetan Classics, August 2023) consists in translation of five treatises, ranging from the 12^thto the 15^th centuries) emblematic of the current beliefs and practices in contemporary Bön.