Talk:Bon

Ngakpa section

This is another section which is not specific to Bon. And seems to confuse Bon, Dzogchen and Tantra. As there is already an entry Ngagpa I delete this section here. --Menmo 21:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Reality and Chakras in Bön

This sounds like a duplication of stuff that could be (is?) found in entries on Vajrayana. It is not so specific to Bön. Thus I would be in favour of removing this section. --Menmo 17:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Menmo, I've found it in a book by a Bön teacher. I don't remember seen it in any Buddhist material (maybe you could you provide references?). So, it seems more or less unique and it seems it should stay in the Bön article.--Klimov 18:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

See for example John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, Snow Lion 1995. And I have to admit an uneasy feeling seeing that such edits are made on the base of having seen something in one book. The whole Vajrayana section of en.wikipedia.org seems to develop into an assembly of reproductions of pieces of teachings people have found in books, or maybe sometimes received from a teacher. But Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, not a surrogate for a comprehensive book or library, and certainly not a surrogate for the teachings themselves which need to be transmitted properly. --Menmo 12:14, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello Klimov, you reverted my modifications. Please explain your arguments here. --Menmo 20:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello Menmo, I've reverted your modifications because they were only wholesale deletions. Loss of information, that does not seem constructive or positive.--Klimov 19:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I have already explained, see above, that your input is nothing specific to Bon, it rather belongs to Vajrayana in general. Same is true for Ngagpa. As an answer to this, you have asked for a quotation that this is general Vajrayana. I have provided such a quotation. So please look for the most suitable entry where to put you text and remove it here.

If the Chakra in Bön are unique, they need their own section. But it would seem that if they are so similar to the Vajrayana Chakra system, which was and influence carried over from Hindu into early Buddhism, then Vajrayana influenced Bön. Chakras would then be an influenced artifact of fairly recent Buddhist oppression, followed by absorption, of Bön. However, it is possible that Hinduism influence Bön pre-Buddhism and pre-Tibetan Empire. This needs to be cleared up. Bwadman (talk) 18:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

As for the Ngagpa section, besides being not Bon-specific, the text reads: Ngagpas (sNgags-pa) ... are male non-monastic practitioners of Bönpo and Dzogchen. There are several mistakes. Bonpo means Bon practioner, so one can only be a practitioner of Bon and not of Bonpo. And a ngagpa does not need to be a Dzogchen practitioner, he can also be a Tantric practitioner. As there is now a separate entry Ngagpa with the same text (!), so there is really no need for it here and I will delete it (and ask you not to revert). Menmo 20:20, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It was somebody else who merged the 'Reality' stuff into here. I've written it as a separate article. I didn't object the merge though.

Would you suggest this 'suitable entry'? --Klimov 20:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

What about Tsa Lung? Menmo 18:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that seems to be a possibility. However, it seems to be good if we could somehow emphasize that this is not only relevant to some kind of exercises, but is independent of them, i.e. valid also for beings who don't do any exercises. --Klimov 18:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Could someone add the IPA pronunciation of "Bön" please? --LakeHMM 02:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, judging from Tibetan Pinyin, bön is apparently pronounced /pʰøn/, although you could probably get away with /bøn/ and maybe that's preferable. Note that bon is also correct, and that is pronounced /bon/ (same as the English "bone"). Actually, I wonder if this article should be moved to bon, which is the older form of the word.—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 17:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Tibetan Pinyin is not a good way for determining the pronounciation. The word (bon in Wylie) is pronounced with an umlaut, and the n is nasalised similar to bon in French. As it is actually pronounced with umlaut, I think it's ok to keep the entry as Bön.--Menmo 11:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It's pronounced with an umlaut in modern Lhasa dialect Tibetan. It was pronounced without an umlaut in classical Tibetan. You are correct about the value of the "n" ... I should have said to pronounce it /pʰø̃/ or /bø̃/, although /bøn/ is still a reasonable approximation for someone with an English accent.—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 16:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Gampo

Does anyone know of a reliable source calling Gampo a Bon practicioner? I believed this as well, and on a recent trip to Tibet I asked this of my tour guide to which she said "that's not true."

Now granted, that was a long time ago and Bon was forced into hiding for a while, but I can't find any mention of this in any articles I collected in my research...scratch that...Berzin Archives mentions something about Gampo continuing Bon burial rituals...but continuing a ritual is one thing while following a different religous tradition is quite another.

Another possibility is the 'gtsug' cult phenomenon that supposedly occurred with kings and court 'nobles' which featured sacrifice...sometimes this was labeled as Bon in the centuries to come. (Per Kvaern...Kvaerne?)

Lead section

The lead section needs to be shortened. According to the Wikipedia:Lead_section#Length, it should be no more than three or four paragraphs. A Ramachandran 13:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Most of the information in this section is not specific to Bon at all, but are generalisms about central Asian shamanism. In my opinion this section could be eliminated completely. It certainly does not provide a clear introduction to the tradition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.40.126.205 (talk) 00:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

In the original Bon arrival story, Bon was the result of three brothers who, through their compassion, desired to bring the Bon religion to the human realm. The first brother, Dagpa, arrived in the last world age and introduced "the way". This is loosely refered to in current commentaries as the "animistic" or "Black Bon". According to tradition, it was taught as in the God's realm. The purpose of this early Bon is to produce "BonKu" (a class of realized beings later to be called Buddha).

This part of the Bon tradition is commonly referred to, but left out of religious treatment on this topic. This earlier form of Bon survives today and is found across the world in small practice groups led by a Rigdzen (Bonku) or gShen (priest).

Padmagonpo 16:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC) Padma Gonopo Rinpoche

The quote in the lead section is also biased. It assumes that there was not a pre-Tibetan Empire culture with the abilities for a religion as complicated as Bon, and that only with the post Hindu introduction of Buddhism could Bon have originated. This is derogatory to the Bonpo of the Himalayas, which do no necessarily reside only in the Tibetan Empire.Bwadman (talk) 18:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Sanskrit

Sanskrit terms are used on occasion in this article. I suggest that the either they be excised, or some explanation be added as to how an indigenous Tibetan religion came to employ them. Sylvain1972 20:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

"Dorje" is not Mongol, implements not relevant

The word "dorje" is definitely Tibetan (Wylie rdo rje), not Mongol. Is the quotation from Pegg accurate? In other words, did Pegg get this wrong, or (as seems more likely) did someone transcribe it incorrectly?

Also the quotation seems irrelevant to the subject of the section. Also, the implements listed are not specific to Bön but are equally used by Buddhists (and I think probably also Shaivites, but I'm not certain about that). I would favor deleting it altogether. -- Actually, I am going to be bold and will go ahead and do that, and if someone wants to revert, they can (but it would be nice to have an explanation of why this belongs and how it is relevant and whether it is accurate).

Arthur chos (talk) 05:33, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Asian shamanism vs. Category:Bon

Category:Bon is itself a category within Category:Asian shamanism. — Robert Greer (talk) 22:17, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

terminology

I'm under the impression that "Bönpo" is the adjective applied to things associated with Bön. I'm pretty sure that the correct term would be "the Bönpo religion", but in the article, I see "the Bön religion". Isn't that kind of like calling Buddhism "the Buddhism religion" rather than "the Buddhist religion"? Gringo300 (talk) 05:11, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I am under the impression that Bönpo refers primarily to people associated with the Bön religion, but I may be wrong. Hans Adler 06:39, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I am under the impression that -po is exclusively a noun-izing suffix in Tibetan. Depending on context, it can refer either to a person specifically or to any type of thing more generally, but, in this sort of context, I think it would refer only to persons. So, I don't think Bönpo is any kind of adjective. I think the most typical strategy used by English in this type of situations would simply be to use the unmodified noun as an attributive, e.g. a Shinto shrine-maiden or a Zen monk, etc. Regarding Tibetan terms specifically, one sees expressions like both a Gelug lama or a Gelugpa lama, but I think the former is more common.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 02:36, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

General Page Comment

There is a much better discussion of the history and teachings of bon at http://bon-encyclopedia.wikispaces.com/bon overview.

The Description below was taken From http://www.olmoling.org/contents/bon_bonpo - an actual Bon Lama.

Bon and Bonpo ‘Bon’ means ‘Boundlessness’. Its essence is the truth that lies within everything. It is the truth that pervades throughout time and space. It is the miracle that manifests in every moment. Bon is also the spiritual tradition and ancient culture of the Zhang-Zhung Civilization and of Tibet.

The founder of the ancient Bon spiritual tradition was the Buddha Tonpa Shenrab. Tonpa Shenrab was born at the palace Barpo Sogye of Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring. According to the Bon canon, his birth dates 18,000 years ago. His father was Gyalbon Thodkar of the Mu clan and his mother Yonchi Gyalzhedma. His teachings are called ‘Yung Drung Bon’ or ‘Eternal Bon’, and practitioners of Bon are called ‘Bonpo’. The great Shenrab dedicated his whole life to the practice of Eternal Bon for the benefit of all beings. He taught the teaching of Eternal Bon for about five decades, showing the path of compassion to many beings. At the age of 82 he entered into nirvana. His death was a true remainder to many of his followers that we all have to experience the truth of impermanence. Throughout Shenrab’s teaching he tried to communicate with every being, showing them how to recognize their true nature and live with the moment. The essence of his teachings is how to find our home within and abide joyfully with the treasury of contentment that we are all gifted with. His teachings continue to inspire many beings throughout the centuries.

1,800 years later, Mucho Dem Drug organized and classified the entire teaching of Tonpa Shenrab into four categories. The prayers, mantras, the teachings on monastic discipline or precepts, and the biography of Tonpa Shenrab were arranged as part of the Sutra collection (mDo). The second category, Prajnaparamita or ‘Bum’, consists of the detailed exposition of the Perfection of Wisdom teachings. The third category, Tantra, consists of deity visualization, and ritual and esoteric tantric practices. The forth category, ‘mDzod’ consists of the teachings on Dzogchen meditation practices. He also wrote commentaries to these teachings and taught them to many students. Through his teachings and efforts, the teachings of Yung Drung Bon flourished throughout Zhang_Zhung and Tibet. Out of his many students, six become great scholars who translated the teachings of Yung Drung Bon into different languages: Mutsa Tahe and Guhuli Paraya translated Yung Drung Bon into the language of Tagzig. Tritok Partsa translated Yung Drung Bon into Zhang Zhung. Letang Mangpo translated Yung Drung Bon into Chinese. Lhadag Ngadro translated Yung Drung Bon into Indian language, and Sertok Chezam translated Yung Drung Bon into the language of Trom. Through the help of these great scholars, the teachings of Yung Drung Bon reached many parts of the world. In the Bon Canon, these six great scholars are known under the name of “Jamling Khepi Gyendrug”. Later, Tongyu Thuchen of Zhang Zhung translated Yung Drung Bon into Tibetan with the help of the three Tibetan scholars Shari Wuchen, GyimTsa Machung and Chetsa kharbu. After this, the teachings of Yung Drung Bon flourished throughout Tibet.

Around 1196 B.C., Zhutrul Yeshi, a great master from Tagzig established the Bon monastic system and propagated the practice of monastic discipline and philosophical study in the kingdoms of Zhang Zhung and Tibet with energy and devotion. Mutri Tsenpo, the second king of Tibet, was interested in the Bon trantric practice Drakpa Kor Sum and invited many scholars from Zhang Zhung to teach it. Through his efforts, the practice of Tantra, the path of transformation, flourished widely in Tibet.

In the late 7th century, Buddhism came to Tibet from India. During that transition period Bon faced difficulties, yet it survived with the help of great masters who buried and hid many Bon teaching resources. During the reign of Lang Darma, the 40th king of Tibet, Buddhism was entirely terminated. Its first transmission and Tibet went into a spiritual dark age for about a century and a half.

The second transmission for both Bon and Buddhist began around the 10th century. The great Bon master and Terton Shen Chen Luga (996-1035 AD) rediscovered many Bon scriptures that were hidden by earlier Bon masters. One of his students, Dru Yung Drung Lama, founded Yeru Wensaka Monastery in 1072 AD. Yeru Wensaka become the main study center of Bon Practice for many centuries. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by a flood. In 1405 AD, Nyamed Shenrab Gyaltsen from Yeru Wensaka Monastery founded Menri Monastery in place of Yeru Wensaka. Since then, Menri has become the mother monastery of all Bonpos. The abbot of Menri is given the title of the world spiritual head of the Bon tradition. Nyamed Shenrab Gyaltsen became the first abbot of Menri. During the Cultural Revolution in 1959, Menri was destroyed. Later it was reestablished in northern India by Yongzding Tenzing Namdak Rinpoche and His Holiness Lungtok Tenpei Nyima Rinpoche, the 33rd Menri Trizin and head of the Bon tradition.

By Tempa Dukte Lama

Lazzara399 (talk) 22:04, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

"outsiders"

"However, Tibetans still differentiate between Bön and Buddhism, referring to members of the Nyingma, Shakya, Kagyu and Gelug schools as nangpa, meaning "insiders," but to practitioners of Bön as "Bönpo," or even chipa ("outsiders").[20][21]"

I'm pretty sure this contrasts the Buddhist practice of meditation against the originally Bonpo practice of sky-gazing, (although both traditions use both practices now) as in internalists vs. externalists. To me, this phrasing suggests that the appellation "outsiders" is attached to Bonpos with the connotation of "outcast". This much, I think, is untrue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.215.252 (talk) 17:11, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, the question is whether "chipa" also refers to people who are neither Buddhists nor Bönpo. If so, then it probably doesn't originally refer to sky-gazing.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 21:07, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Bon religion is exactly animism and not a compassionate practice and belived come from Mu clan,Tonpa Sherab was a missionary come to tibet in early time. Bon tradition started much earlier than ten thousand years ago in tibet. Was started destroying Bon religion since buddhism cilvilaxation come to tibet in 7th century. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tseringv8 (talk • contribs) 07:55, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I challenge the first sentence of the article

I challenge the first sentence of the article..."Bon is the oldest extant spiritual tradition of Tibet."

We do not have a single Bon text which can be dated earlier that the 11th century. Bon is a branch of Tibetan Vajrayana, which itself is the main surviving branch of Indian Vajrayana. I think this needs to be made clear because people demean Bon as some sort of shamanism. Dr. Sam van Schaik says the term "Bon" first comes about by end of the tenth century BUDDHISTS to designate RETROACTIVELY old funerary rites.

http://earlytibet.com/2009/08/24/buddhism-and-bon-iv/ Thigle (talk) 19:54, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Wordpress blogs as references

I guess blogs by respected published authors are not allowed?LhunGrub (talk) 14:56, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Random wordpress blogs are not reliable sources. I can start a wordpress blog and claim to be any author I wish, which makes them generally unreliable, per WP:SPS. - SudoGhost 15:10, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:SPS: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications."LhunGrub (talk) 19:16, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but there's no verification that the person using that wordpress blog is the person he claims to be, thus it is not a reliable source. - SudoGhost 19:22, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Bön, a belief separated from animism?

understanding tibetan buddhism: bon - a heterodox system. I don't know. It sounds like some articles like I posted above implies that Bön and generic animism are separate entities. Kinda confusing. Komitsuki (talk) 15:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Bön means a variety of things in different cases. Modern organised Bön is very close to Buddhism, but that's not the only sense of it.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 04:14, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Article title

As I said in the edit summary, given the vagueness of Bon, which has many different meanings, pure numbers mean nothing when determining the common spelling. Many of the sources uses Bon and Bön interchangeably, but the correct spelling and common name for this article's subject appears to be Bön. However, if there is evidence to the contrary, I'd welcome any discussion on this. - SudoGhost

1. Do a set of Google queries (excluding quotes) "Bon Tibet OR Religion -Bön" vs "Bön Tibet OR Religion -Bon".
2. Read the various footnotes in the article.  The majority of the spellings is "Bon".
3. Read this Talk page; it is mentioned in several places that the common spelling is "Bon" but that WP editors here believe "Bön" more closely represents Tibetan pronunciation; that logic not being supported by WP policies WP:EN, WP:UE, WP:UCN, WP:DIACRITICS.

What is your list of RS that demonstrates that the most common English spelling is "Bön"?  Because having looked, I can't find them.  Please include links.  Thx — Who R you? Talk 11:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Bon does appear to be used somewhat more than Bön, however per WP:PRECISE the article should use natural disambiguation when possible: "If it exists, choose a different, alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit, not as commonly as the preferred but ambiguous title (do not, however, use obscure or made up names)." As diacritics are "neither encouraged nor discouraged", and Bön is neither an obscure or made up name, the natural disambiguation title Bön should be used as per the policies at Wikipedia:Article titles. - SudoGhost 11:56, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

• Firstly, saying that "Bön" is also common in English doesn't make it so; even the article's sources only lists two references with spelling of "Bön"; and of those, one is a non-English (i.e. German) publisher so use of the umlaut is second nature there, but further investigation shows that that author's personal archive website lists the book's title as Introductory History of the Five Tibetan Traditions of Buddhism and Bon without the umlaut; and the second reference is listed as "Bön and Bonpos" by Norbu (1980) in the Tibetan Review, but reality is that a search of the Tibetan Review site finds zero articles with the spelling "Bön", compared with a reported 196 hits with the spelling "Bon"; including the paper that was incorrectly cited here and should read as "Bon and Bonpos" (I'll correct all these errors in the article forthwith).  And while Google Books lists the title of the article's cited 'further reading' as Sacred Landscape and Pilgrimage in Tibet: in Search of the Lost Kingdom of Bön; the Google Synopsis identifies the contents of the book as spelling the term as "Bon", and Amazon, along with listing the title correctly as "…Bon", provides a link where the book's cover is clearly visible and reads "Bon".  That then leaves a single reference, Drung, Deu and Bön: Narrations, Symbolic languages and the Bön tradition in ancient Tibet, which does (as confirmed by Amazon & Google) in fact spell it "Bön"; but when one reads the full citation in the WP article, one sees that it identifies the publication as "Translated from Tibetan into Italian edited and annotated by … . Translated from Italian into English by …"; personally I don't see translated from Tibetan to Italian to English as measuring up to the standard of a reliable source in the area of most common English spelling, but I trust you'll be ready to explain your position in an RM if you'd care to argue otherwise.  So to wrap up on that, I'd argue that there isn't a single reliable source that backs up the non-English spelling Bön.

Secondly, as to your reference to WP:PRECISE, as indicated, "Bön" is not an "… alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit, not as commonly as the preferred but ambiguous title …"; in fact, it's a name which no other reliable English sources have put forward as an English spelling; and since the remainder of that sentence, in the WP:PRECISE policy, is "… (do not, however, use obscure or made up names).", and since it appears quite obvious that "Bön" is precisely that, a made up name, acknowledged earlier in this talk page as such by the WP editors, it is specifically identified by policy as unacceptable.  But more than that, the purpose of WP:PRECISE, and all the rest of the policies in this area, relates strongly to a) not misleading readers with incorrect, arbitrary, foreign language, or made up spellings, and b) English reader interaction is the Wikipedia search engine.  An English reader cannot type in "Bön" in the search box; it simply doesn't exist on our keyboards and realistically no common English speaking reader has memorized the shortcut keys for the umlauts nor are they running the multi-lingual keyboard apps.  You likely don't consider it to be that much of a deal because you obviously regularly operate your computer in a multi-lingual environment and have it set up as such; perhaps you should try uninstalling the language selection features in Windows (or whatever OS you're running), and delete all the shortcuts on your system to provide support for extended character sets, replace your existing keyboard with an English language keyboard, and stop using the keyboard codes that you've memorized for non-English characters, and then start using and editing Wikipedia; I expect you'll find that articles like this involve twice as much work to find, edit in, reference, move back and forth between, etc; now imagine you're the English reader who's trying to find this article, go to the search box and find it, you can type "B" but "Bön" isn't one of the 10 top hits listed, you can type "Bo" but "Bön" doesn't show up because an "o" with an umlaut is not an "o" without, so now you're going to have to either guess that a redirect has been created for "Boen", or you're going to use the redirect you created when you undid the move, the one from "Bon (religion)", or your going to have to go to the Bon (disambiguation) page, which is precisely what WP:PRECISE is about avoiding.  And then what are you telling the English reader once they actually find the article; you're saying that a character which does not exist at all in the English language, the umlaut, is now a part of English (which it is not).  You're telling them that the Germanic symbol, which has been systematically and intentionally dropped from the Germanic based language of English since the advent of English, has been adopted into the English language because you (and perhaps one or two other editors) want it to be; See: WP:NOT for a long list of things Wikipedia is not, I don't believe re-inventors of the English language is listed because it was deemed a little to obvious to add, but perhaps that was an oversight, for which consensus should now be sought, to correct.

So in conclusion, I've now spent the better part of two days dealing with trying to be really nice and deal with you as civilly and respectfully as I possibly can, and to, truly the best of my ability, following WP:AGF; but given that, resultant from your reversion of the move (which created a redirect) without first starting a conversation, and given the fact that neither of us is an admin, reality is that it is not possible for us to even agree to redo the move and get it over with.  If you agree that the proper course of action is a move to "Bon (religion)" or if you have a better English suggestion, and if we can agree, then I will approach an Admin to move this back again, over the redirect, and we can consider this matter done with.  Alternatively, I will do the RM thing and you can prepare your list of English sources which backup the fictitious non-English spelling of "Bön", and I will simply add you to my mental list of Wikipedians who want to re-write English according to their own private agendas and POV, by ignoring the fundamental, engrained pillar of WP, the concept of RS.  I leave it to you to consider.  Meanwhile I will update all the reference errors in the article and all the 100 other misspellings of "Bon" as "Bön". — Who R you? Talk 03:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Your comment is very long. With that said, your arguments for Bön not being a common English subject name are not backed up by the arguments you yourself presented initially. Your own argument for moving the article was that Bön is less common than Bon. You moved an article without discussion, and as I felt it was an incorrect move as per the reasons above, I reverted it per WP:BRD.

I absolutely do not agree that Bon (religion) is is the proper article title, when there is a viable and logical natural disambiguation available, WP:PRECISE says that we use that title. To suggest that the Bön is not used by any English reliable sources is incorrect, [1][2] so your argument that WP:PRECISE doesn't apply is not correct, as it is neither an obsecure nor made up name. The second part of your large second paragraph is against the spirit of what you yourself linked, WP:DIACRITICS, "the use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged", and the fact that redirects and the disambiguation page both exist make this argument for changing the article's title one without any standing.

To summarize, WP:PRECISE still applies in this case, and the logical natural disambiguation Bön should be used over a parenthetical one. Reliable sources use Bön, ignoring them does not somehow make the use of Bön "fictitious", thereby negating WP:PRECISION. I have shown through Wikipedia's policies on article titles that Bön is the correct title, not Bon (religion). - SudoGhost 04:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

It is interesting to note that, because I disagree with you, you accuse me of "private agendas and POV", yet your editing history and talk page suggest you are changing article titles to remove diacritics for the sole purpose of removing diacritics. Is this the kind of "private agenda and POV" I was being accused of? - SudoGhost 04:24, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• My only "agenda" is to follow the policies, which are to follow the RS.  Where the most common name in English is shown to be with diacritics, as I have stated on more than one occasion, then I don't oppose the diacritic form.  In this case "Bön" ranges roughly between 300 & 600 times as uncommon; if "Bon" were twice as common (or even three times as common) as "Bön", I wouldn't disagree with you; but at 50 times as common I don't consider it anything but a commmonly misspelled slang version and at 10 times that I don't believe it counts as being a name for the same thing we're talking about.  Further, there is a big difference between a diacritic which is occasionally used in English, such as the accents grave, acute, circumflex, and cedilla, and the umlaut and other completely foreign diacritics.  In this case, it is a made up foreign, non-English name for a transliteration from Tibetan; to say that the English version of that made up spelling is then going to contain symbols which don't exist in English seems foolish to me.  But I guess we just have irreconcilable differences of opinion and the only reasonable solution is to RM the issue.  I'll do that (but probably tomorrow).  Ciao for now. — Who R you? Talk 04:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Again, you're saying it is "made up" without backing that theory up, ignoring WP:DIACRITICS when it doesn't suit your position, even though you yourself addressed it above. Reliable sources use Bön. When presented with that, you ignore them. You're also throwing around vague numbers without backing them up, numbers which don't matter in the first place, as the prominence of the information holds more value than the number of ghits you can drag up. None of this demonstrates in any way why a parenthetical disambiguation should be used over a natural one, when Wikipedia policy says the natural disambiguation should be used. - SudoGhost 05:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• The numbers were, as you well know, included in the move comment which was " (moved Bön to Bon (religion) over redirect: WP:EN, WP:UE, WP:UCN, WP:DIACRITIC — Most common English spelling — gNews: Bön:1; Bon:591 — gBooks: Bön:10,700; Bon:3,880,000 — The vast majority of the articles own sources ...)", or did you not bother to read it before you reverted?  Only having one English news reference is a pretty clear indication of what is accepted spelling; with the books the issue of course becomes a number of them being foreign books which don't necessarily represent common English spelling; while a preponderance of them obviously would, a ratio of 362:1 does not.  We'll leave it to others to decide.— Who R you? Talk 05:24, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

A "foreign book" in English? What a sight, given that this is an international encyclopaedia. Your WP:GHITS number theory is an argument for WP:COMMONNAME, not WP:PRECISION, and in fact only reinforces the fact that Bön is a valid name for the article's subject. As I said, and is reflected in WP:GHITS, the quality of the search engine results matters more than the raw number. This raw number is useless, given the ambiguous nature of the word "Bon", even when operands are applied to the search (unless you mean to say that you went through 3,880,000 hits and saw all of them were about this article's subject, and not for instance, a religious event at Cap Bon). - SudoGhost 05:33, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, otherwise called an English translation.  You'll have to explain some time how your gut instinct and all knowing powers of English spelling make you aware that the Google count on this is so wrong; granted Google hit numbers have never been accurate; but ratios of 500 times the matches are, to the best of my knowledge, still representative of the facts as to the actual ratio; and certainly a lot more meaningful that anyone's gut.

You'll have to explain how you are determining quality of sources from the search engine; I kind of figured the fact that the primary resource for the entire article, the book by Per Kværne which is cited twice, along with the fact that every other reference source, save one, spells it "Bon", kind of gave the ending of the story away; but by all means, give it some thought as to what the agrument will be as to why, if these other sources that misspell the word as "Bön" are the "quality" sources, they aren't the sources used for the article instead of the current ones?  But again, no sense wasting our time arguing it amongst ourselves, I just thought I'd give you a little extra time to think about some better justifications than these; I guess time will tell. — Who R you? Talk 11:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

That an editor relied on a source when writing the article does not mean that any sources not in the article are without merit. You don't like diacritics, so any spelling of Bön is obviously a foreign, translated spelling, and doesn't belong in the article, despite the fact that reliable sources spell it this way. I'm confused, are you trying to argue for the common name here? Because that's about as effective as this argument of yours will be. Reliable sources call the article's subject Bön. That reliable sources exist that don't spell it this way is in no way an argument that WP:PRECISE doesn't apply. But of course, if you don't like something, you can just assert it is misspelled, in stark violation of both WP:DIACRITICS and WP:RS. That works too. - SudoGhost 11:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The "English translation" theory only applies if the book is not in English. The two above took two seconds to find, and are quite obviously in English. WP:GHITS is useless here, given the numerous alternate meanings of the term. I don't know how to say that any simpler. Bon means many, many other things, and straight numbers mean nothing, when those numbers are not all reliable sources and are not all about the article's subject. However, even if your ghits was 100% accurate and the best way to determine the common name, it still means nothing, because this is about a natural disambiguation, not the WP:COMMONNAME. - SudoGhost 12:46, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Article Text "Bön" is not the English term used for this

@SudoGhost: And on what basis do you revert the updates to the article?  You agree above that "Bon" is the obvious most common English spelling of this term.  I undo your reversion as there is no naming conflict to justify using anything but the most common English term within the article itself.  You may have an argument, which I don't agree with and I think is weak, with WP:PRECISE regarding the best name for the article, but as for wording within the article, there is no such policy to back you up.  Further, in reverting, you restored several dead links and restored references which do not accurately reflect the titles of the books they claim to represent (or is your idea of WP editing that the goal is to create inaccuracy and to improperly reference sources) because that sure isn't my idea of what we're doing here and I believe other editors will agree.  So I guess we can RfC while we RM this article. — Who R you? Talk 05:15, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

You are removing, without reason, any and all references to Bön in the article. Further, you are removing dead links in violation of WP:DEADLINK, and then using that as a reason to remove Bön spellings when these sources support that information. That Bon may or may not be the common name does not give license to automatically and without prejudice remove any and all mention of Bön, which is used in reliable sources. Nice try with the "is your idea of..." fallacy though, ironic as it is. - SudoGhost 05:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a limit to how many links should appear in External Links.  This article more than exceeds that.  Most of those links are questionable in the first place and a number of them are now dead links.  Those relating to references, such as one I'm about to add below, were not removed.  As for the spelling "Bön", you acknowledge above that this is not even close to the common English spelling, as a matter of fact, with only one news mention with the spelling "Bön", it wouldn't even mean the standards required by WP:N with regard to sufficient national coverage to demonstrate its notability.  And is there a reason that you're intentionally citing publications incorrectly; misspelling them?

And you'll note (perhaps) that all the sources that actually spell it as "Bön" were left reading as such, all one of them still existed in the edited version, properly reflecting the source.

Why do you want "Bon" misspelled in this article?  There must be more to the story since you acknowledge that the sources don't back it up.  As for the reverts, see you in WP:ANI for WP:3RR.— Who R you? Talk 05:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of acknowledging anything of the sort, on either "you acknowledge" statement, and the fact that you have to use "you acknowledge" shows the weakness of your argument, since "you acknowledge" then gives license to not back it up, which you still have not done. I don't want anything "misspelled", what I want is for someone with an diacritic agenda to demonstrate why they are making these changes before they do so, as you removed absolutely any reference to Bön in the entire article.

• Sorry, I guess I took "Bon does appear to be used somewhat more than Bön" as a muted acknowledgement of the fact that there are somewhere around 300 to 500 times as many sources for the spelling "Bon"; but since you apparently don't agree with that either, I guess I'll understand more clearly upon receiving explanation of your interpretation during RM and RfC discussions; so we'll leave it till then. — Who R you? Talk 11:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

By the way, you may want to read WP:3RR. Unless 2 somehow became more than 4 when I wasn't looking. - SudoGhost 05:49, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

" The rule is not an entitlement to revert a page a specific number of times. "

Reverting a move is a revert. — Who R you? Talk 05:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

3 is still less than 4. Citing WP:3RR is not the same as citing WP:EW, one is a subsection of the other, and does not apply outside of that criteria. If you're without valid reason to change the content and are moving on to attacking the person instead, this belongs on my talk page, as it is not related to improving this article. If you'd like to discuss the article's content, however, this is the place for it. However, accusing me of edit warring and then reverting to your preferred version despite the fact that it is known that there is a disagreement is ironic. - SudoGhost 06:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Did you happen to notice that the quote is from the WP:3RR section? — Who R you? Talk 11:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Go back and read it again then, this time keeping yourself in mind. I can't imagine the justification one would make by quoting a rule and finger pointing for violating that rule, and then following up by immediately breaking that exact rule. - SudoGhost 11:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear combatants,

FYI, the 3RR rule does not define the upper limit of permissible number of edits per day, it defines a bright-line limit at which an edit war has been proven to exist. Edit wars can be had with fewer than 3RR if it is clear that battles are being fought in articlespace with precious little discussion on the talk pages. Now…

You’ve spit on each other’s shoes over at ANI enough and the 3RR stuff ought to be sufficiently resolved. The only issue at hand now is to establish the facts about how the spelling of “Bön / Bon” is most customarily done in the English language. Wikipedia always follows the practices of the RSs. Given that this article’s own external links takes readers to The Bon Foundation and this PBS article that uses “Bon”, a cursory inspection suggests this article is not using the proper English-language spelling.

Let’s see evidence now. This is an collaborative writing environment inhabited by an all-volunteer army. We do not entrust, mere wikipedians with the job of debating—with pouted lower lip and raised brow—what is the proper future for the English language. We do not engage in primary debate on how the English language ought to be expanded with diacritics, nor what is the proper way for diacritics to be expunged from the English language. That is why wikipedians are steered away from oratory about the proper future of the English language and are steered towards following the RSs.

Greg L (talk) 15:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

"Dear combatants" is about where I should have stopped reading, because it doesn't get any better than that. If you're here to resolve something, you're doing a piss poor job of it. I'm also not sure where this "English language ought to be expanded with diacritics, nor what is the proper way for diacritics to be expunged from the English language" comment is coming from, because I see nothing like that on this talk page. Half of your belittling proclamation there seems copy-pasted from another WP:DIACRITICS related discussion, but otherwise it is completely out-of-place in regards to any discussion here. Wikipedia is also not an army, because an army uses a WP:BATTLEGROUND.

With that said, I'm going to repeat and expand upon what I already said at ANI. I was in the process of partially reverting my last edit, save for some minor lede stuff and fixing the category which was broken in the process. For the moment at least, the reliable sources present in the article use Bon as the primary spelling, so the spelling in the article should reflect this. However, for the article's title, a natural disambiguation should be used over a parenthetical one, and as Bön is a common alternate name for the article's subject, it should be used over Bon (religion), per WP:PRECISE. - SudoGhost 17:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Huh? If you can’t assume good faith and instead attack the motives of people who disagree with you as you did above, you may not be cut out for participation in a collaborative writing environment. The issue of fact now seems to be settled. English-language RSs (even The Bon Foundation), spell it without diacritics. Your argument about preferring “Bön” over “Bon (religion)”, while your opinion, unfortunately flies in the face of the fundamental ways Wikipedia handles these things; we don’t run off and spell things contrary to the way the RSs—and even The Bon Foundation themselves spell the word. Greg L (talk) 19:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't even know how to respond to that. AGF to what? Being compared to this? I never assumed bad faith, you may want to WP:AAGF, otherwise you may not be cut out for participation in a collaborative writing environment. See above and below, because unfortunately, it seems you're not reading the talk page before you respond, because what you're saying is the opposite of what Wikipedia policy says, and unless you can provide something to contradict this policy, then it is ultimately your opinion, against Wikipedia policy, not my opinion. I'm also not sure why you're quoting the Bon Foundation as if it is some official representation of the religion, as it is not. - SudoGhost 20:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I wrote that the way to settle the disagreement is by looking towards the practices of the English-language RSs. It’s quite clear now that the preponderance of the most-reliable, English-language RSs use “Bon” as the spelling. That’s why this article (with a move and editing of the body text) will have to be made compliant. Sorry. Greg L (talk) 20:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, again it seems you're not reading the pertinent points here, so to clear up any confusion, I'll make my point as clear as I know how:

1. Bon is the common name for the article's subject
2. Bon is already a disambiguation page.
3. Bon (religion) is a parenthetical disambiguation.
4. Bön is a natural disambiguation, and one commonly used by reliable sources (unless you mean to suggest Oxford is not reliable), though not as commonly as Bon.
5. WP:PRECISE clearly states "If it exists, choose a different, alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit, not as commonly as the preferred but ambiguous title." It then states that a parenthetical disambiguation should only be used if a natural disambiguation is not possible. This is not the case, so per WP:PRECISE, Bon (religion) should not be used as the article's title.

So unless there is some overriding policy that says otherwise, there's no basis in using Bon (religion) over Bön. - SudoGhost 20:24, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Moving on

I wanted to clarify and make sure there was some kind of rough consensus before editing the page again. Viewing the references in the article in its current state gives Bon as the more common spelling. With this in mind, I wanted to change most of the spellings to Bon. However I think the article's title should remain at Bön, as WP:DIACRITICS says that diacritics should be "neither encouraged nor discouraged", and Bön is "an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English"[3][4][5], making it the natural disambiguation for the article's subject per WP:PRECISION.

Is there any objection to this? - SudoGhost 18:15, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• It’s a start. Change the body text to “Bon”. Fine. But your remedy for the title (preferring the misspelling “Bön” over the “Bon (religion)” is a misinterpretation borne out of a perception of conflicting guidelines where no conflict actually exists. And your interpretation of “neither encouraged nor discouraged” never takes precedence over WP:RS. The spelling has to be correct. Since that means the parenthetical must be added, then it has to be added—they’re common across the project and there is no harm. Greg L (talk) 20:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

See above. Reliable sources do use Bön. Although Bon is the WP:COMMONNAME, that does not nullify Bön for the use of WP:PRECISE - SudoGhost 20:37, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The question is “How do the preponderance of most-reliable sources spell the name?” The litmus test is not to find some RSs and claim that as preferable. I am asking both User:Who R you? and you to present evidence. Until matters of fact are cleared up, there is no consensus to do anything at the moment. But I am quite certain that changing the body text to instances of “Bon” will meet with User:Who R you?’s satisfaction as well as mine. So have at it. Greg L (talk) 20:49, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not understanding the relevance of your question here. I don't think anybody is questioning that Bon is the WP:COMMONNAME, so the question of the most common or preferred spelling is irrelevant, because it is not something that is being disagreed upon. - SudoGhost 20:54, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Particularly in recognition of your Bobraynor revision, Thank you.  Beyond that, the body of the article as it currently stands, with regards to diacritics, is, to the best of my knowledge, completely accurate and therefore wholely acceptable.  This therefore, as far as I'm concerned, resolves all previously discussed issued which might have required an RfC on the contents of the article in relation to the our discussions of diacritics, RS, etc.  With regard to the question of the article's title and an RM, given some of the points you raise, I will consider whether it is more reasonable to first pursue an RfC for addition clarification with regard to the wording in WP:DIACRITICS, before looking again at moving this article's title.  I trust that my length diatribes, while no doubt tedious to read, have fully explained by point regarding the use of diacritics in the title, and my reasons for oppositon.  I continue to believe that the article is currently as misspelled as if it were titled "Boen"/"Bown"/"Bone" (perhaps more so given that the umlaut is, from my POV, not a part of the English alphabet), and to believe that the page should be moved (and I fully acknowledge and understand you completely disagree and why, but it simply isn't worth having the argument at this point in time); and I will (almost certainly) be pursuing an RM on the matter; however, I will leave that for at least a little while to consider if it doesn't first make more sense to try to clarify any policy ambiguities, particularly those related to this situation where the existing disambiguation page currently prevents this article from using its actual English name.  I trust (at least in relation to your editing efforts SudoGhost) that the body of the article will remain accurately spelled and that therefore there won't be any further disagreements in that regard.  I assume that means that there was nothing else you thought you needed any kind of consensus from me on, with regard to changes within the article; but if there are other thoughts, I'll respond upon watching a talk change here (or to a post on my talk page).  Cheers — Who R you? Talk 23:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I think there can be no doubt that "Bön" is an established spelling, and that "Bon" is also an established, perhaps more established, spelling. The obvious explanation appears to be this: Tibetology is rather strong in German-speaking countries (and more specifically here in Vienna), and many English-speaking Tibetologists have to read German translations occasionally. The pronunciation of the vowel in Bon/Bön is precisely the same as ö in German and cannot be reproduced in English orthography without changing the consonants. (The word is pronounced roughly like burn without the r.) Add to this the fact that Bon/Bön is not very well known among the general public, and the odd spelling begins to make sense.

I have not checked whether the "Bon" spelling is really so much more common than the "Bön" spelling in high-quality English sources as to make it the dominant one. But as others have explained above, this is not even relevant because "Bon" would require disambiguation and "Bön" does not. The other natural disambiguator without the umlaut, "Bon religion", is POV because it's a matter of POV whether Bon/Bön is a religion or a flavour of Buddhism. Hans Adler 09:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC) I asked a Tibetologist over lunch. He said the usual spelling in English is Bon and noted that even "(religion)" as a disambiguator could be considered slightly POV because it's not completely clear whether Buddhism should be called a religion in the first place (as opposed to a philosophy). Hans Adler 16:44, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hans, you wrote But as others have explained above, this is not even relevant because "Bon" would require disambiguation and "Bön" does not. Are you seriously suggesting that anything other than a minor percentage of visiting readers will type “Bön” instead of “Bon”? Even on a Mac, which gives me direct keyboard access to that diacritic, it slows things down. Since The Bon Foundation spells it “Bon”, well more than 95% of our visiting readership will just type “Bon” into the search field. And where are they taken when they do so? To the ‘Bon’ disambiguation page. So there is no virtue whatsoever to having the title spelled in a manner that is inconsistent with the way the preponderance of the RSs spell it as well as with how the word is spelled in the body text. And noting this one from you: I have not checked whether the "Bon" spelling is really so much more common than the "Bön" spelling in high-quality English sources as to make it the dominant one. It would help if you took the time to do so. Greg L (talk) 18:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Your argument is completely against WP:PRECISE, which specifically says the opposite of what you're saying. If readers are taken to the disambiguation page when they type Bon, what does that have to do with Bön vs. Bon (religion), as either way they'd be taken to the disambiguation page?

As an aside note, from what I'm seeing, Bon appears to largely be an American English spelling (The Bon Foundation is an American organization) while other countries that use English (such as Britain) appear to spell it Bön. - SudoGhost 18:27, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• Please quote the text at WP:PRECISE that supports what you are saying. Greg L (talk) 19:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

i) Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose a different, alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit, not as commonly as the preferred but ambiguous title (do not, however, use obscure or made up names). which is what I was referring to when I said that your statement (specifically there is no virtue whatsoever to having the title spelled in a manner that is inconsistent with the way the preponderance of the RSs spell it) was against what was said at WP:PRECISE. - SudoGhost 19:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The true policy

By selectively quoting just one option out of two, it gives the appearance that WP:PRECISE requires what you want. Here is what WP:PRECISE says:

This policy section should be read in conjunction with the disambiguation guideline.

When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise, but only as precise as necessary. For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "United States Apollo program (1961–75)" over Apollo program (given that the year range refers to the whole of the program, not a portion of it); or "Queen (London, England rock band)" over Queen (band). Remember that concise titles are preferred.

However, because pages cannot share the same title, it is not always possible to use the exact title that may be desired for an article, as that title may have another meaning. Where there is more than one existing Wikipedia article for another meaning of a desired title, as a general rule:

• If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a term refers, then that term can be the title of that article without modification, provided it follows all other applicable policies.
• However, when a topic's most commonly used name, as reflected in reliable sources, is ambiguous (can refer to more than one topic covered in Wikipedia), and the topic is not primary, that name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated. There are generally two methods employed to avoid using an ambiguous title:

i) Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose a different, alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit, not as commonly as the preferred but ambiguous title (do not, however, use obscure or made up names). If this is not possible:

ii) Parenthetical disambiguation: Add a disambiguating term in parentheses (or sometimes after a comma), directly after the ambiguous name.

Examples

• The word "English" commonly refers to either the people or the language. Because of the ambiguity, we use the alternative but still common titles, English language and English people, allowing natural disambiguation.
• On the other hand, "mercury" has distinct meanings that do not have sufficiently common alternative names, so we use instead parenthetical disambiguation: Mercury (element), Mercury (mythology) and Mercury (planet).

Where there is no set name for a topic, so a title of our own conception is necessary, e.g., List of birds of Nicaragua and Campaign history of the Roman military, more latitude is allowed to form descriptive and unique titles.

Titles of distinct articles may differ only in their detail. Many such differences involve capitalization, separation or non-separation of components, or pluralization: MAVEN and Maven; Red Meat and Red meat; Sea-Monkeys and SeaMonkey. While each name in such a pair may already be precise and apt, a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other; so use appropriate disambiguation techniques, such as hatnotes or disambiguation pages, to help readers find the article they want.

All it says is There are generally two methods employed to avoid using an ambiguous title and that one of them is parenthetical, which is perfectly acceptable. There has been compelling evidence presented here that “Bon” is used by the preponderance of the English-langauge RSs, including The Bon Foundation themselves, which (notwithstanding your protestations), is an RS. Thus, having the article title “Bön” when the body text and most RSs are “Bon” has no virtues and has the disadvantage of being inconsistent. Most editors would merely type “Bon” in the search field and be taken to a disambiguation page.

Thus, making the article title consistent is best. Sorry, but your quoting just one snippet out of WP:PRECISE is misleading. It’s clear we will have to move the article title and I don’t see that you have a leg to stand on. Greg L (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

You seem to have missed the part that says parenthetical disambiguations are used if natural ones are not possible. "There are generally two methods employed to avoid using an ambiguous title:...Natural disambiguation (followed by definition). If this is not possible: Parenthetical disambiguation." It is also shown in the examples, so there is no ambiguity in its meaning. Are you suggesting that this is the case? - SudoGhost 19:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Your arguments are illogical. I don’t agree with you. Thus, we will have to agree to disagree. Go try to convince User:Who R You? of this. Greg L (talk) 19:48, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. And don’t diminish my posts again like you did here by collapsing key text that is central to the facts. Collapsing is typically done by a third-party editor and, even then, only when pages become so long they are tedious to scroll through. Your selectively quoting just part of a policy out of context was misleading. You made your bed by doing that so now you can sleep in it. Anyone can see the above policy in total. Greg L (talk) 19:52, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It isn't my argument, it's Wikipedia policy. A parenthetical disambiguation is used if a natural one is not possible. This is not the case, so Wikipedia policy is against the argument for a parenthetical disambiguation. However, I thank you for your input, and I thank you for attempting to resolve the dispute above, it is greatly appreciated. With that said, the issue of Bon vs Bön in the article appears to be resolved, and the article's title appears to be temporarily staying at Bön per rough consensus pending Who R you?'s project. Thank you again. - SudoGhost 20:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

We will await what User:Who R you? thinks to see if there is a consensus. Greg L (talk) 20:25, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

He has already done so, saying that he "...will leave that for at least a little while to consider if it doesn't first make more sense to try to clarify any policy ambiguities...". However, to make sure that I am not misunderstanding him, I will leave a message on his talk page. Thank you. - SudoGhost 20:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• I did, in fact, try to drop the subject only because having to spend my first few hours, every time I sign on to Wikipedia, going over and over the same argument that's been going on for days simply makes me feel that it isn't worth the effort and that there are better things to do in life than be unwilling participant in someone's moot court learning experience.  To all those it's applicable for: If you'd like to learn to develop your debating skills, go join a debating society where others have a similar desire to invest their time honing such skills.; I personally have no such desire; my purpose on WP was simply to assist in hopefully providing something that others might find useful and informative, and on ensuring that what is provided is (as much as possible) accurate (which, in the case of WP, means accurately represents the RS); reality is that I occasionally discover that accurate representation of the RS is not necessarily the norm (as with the case of this article and spelling).

I came across the article, checked the sources, and found that they don't match the facts (i.e. the RS), and upon trying to correct that have spent a good 5 times (perhaps 10 times) as long arguing to keep the corrected facts as I did investigating and correcting the facts.  My general mindset is, as a result (here and at numerous other conversations), WP isn't worth it; an opinion which other sources have indicated tens of thousands of other editors have presumably shared and resultantly abandoned WP.

Since I apparently can't simply drop this issue for a while and concentrate on things which are far less aggravating, I will (at least for now) once again interact with this canine whom I would have preferred to permit some somniloquence.

@Hans Alder – The fact that "Bön" has occasionally not been properly transcribed into English from the German documents / translations of this Tibetan religion does not in any way further support its being common English spelling.  While you, being Deutsche (or at least European), consider the umlaut to be a standard part of the alphabet, English does not and never has; with the exception of the spelling of "Führer" (which we intentionally misspell as a purposefully clear indication of a foreign concept as well as word [we only ever refer to him, disdainfully, as Hitler] but enough about him, merely an exemplar exception) English transcribes / translates / whatever the umlaut into appropriate vowel combinations (oe, ae, etc); if the German pronunciation is "Bur/n", (ignoring the fact that the German pronunciation is irrelevant and that it is the Tibetan proninciation which we would in fact consider; but, for arguments' sake, assuming both to be identical) then I'd suggest that a better Anglicized version of the word would be "Boon" or "Boun" or "Boune" or something else equally distinct and relatively non-existant in English (without the need for expansion of the Roman/English alphabet); but then that decision isn't one which Wikipedians get to make (and therefore hopefully a conversation that we don't even need to bother having), seeing as our policy is to follow the RS.  And if you'd like some references to support that the term "Bon (religion)" is appropriate, and that it is a religion, might I refer you to an article (currently) entitled "Bön".

@all – Rather than this being a battle, is there consensus that the most appropriate resolution for this is simply to move "Bon" → "Bon (disambiguation)" and then "Bön" → "Bon" with an appropriate tophat for the disambiguation page; a review of the disambiguation page (Bon), IMO, indicates that everything else there is a comparatively obtuse reference to the term, all of which naturally defer to this page as the primary "Bon".  Agreed / Opposed? — Who R you? Talk 00:54, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You and Greg L are misunderstanding so many things that it's hard to decide where to start with the corrections, and I am sure to miss some of your misconceptions.

• Bön is a Tibetan word, not a German word, so of course I described the Tibetan pronunciation, not the German pronunciation. Since Bön has not become an English word yet, and in fact doesn't even seem close to becoming one, any pronunciation of this word in an English context will be an approximation of the Tibetan pronunciation. And all of this doesn't even matter because I only explained how the word is pronounced because this helps to understand why the word is often spelled with a German umlaut even in English.
• Your claim that the spelling "Bön" in English sources is due to improper transcription from German is your original research, just as my implicit claim that scholars do it deliberately is of course also original research.
• Webster's Dictionary of Geographic Names (the dictionary recommended for place names by the Chicago Manual of Style) is full of names written with various modified Latin letters. For some the dictionary mentions alternative spellings using just the 26 core Latin letters, but these always direct to the most pedantic spelling (with diacritics) for the main entry. (And of course standard English dictionaries contain many French and some Spanish words with various diacritics, e.g. café, façade etc. For some of these the preferred spelling in English is with the diacritic, although details depend on the dictionary or style guide.)
• As to your gratuitous and incorrect reference to the word Führer, I remind you of WP:NPA.
• As I explained before, and Greg L simply ignored, any disambiguation involving the word "religion" in the title is at least mildly POV and should therefore be avoided if possible.

All this said, I agree with your proposal. Bon/Bön, obscure as it is, does appear to be the primary meaning of "Bon". The best approach is a formal WP:RM request for Bon -> Bon (disambiguation), followed by a move Bön -> Bon. Hans Adler 01:21, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Who R you?, I apologize for bringing you back to the talk page, it was not my intention to attempt to continue to debate any points further and I have no intention or desire to do so. I just didn't want to misrepresent your view, and felt it best to ask for clarification in that regard, as per this comment.

With that said, I think the page moves suggested would most certainly be the best course of action, as it does appear to be the primary topic for Bon. This would also dissolve any issues of natural over parenthetical disambiguation, and would also solve any issues with the diacritic umlaut being used in the article's title. Unless anyone can demonstrate that this article's subject is not the most common, I can see no reason not to move the current disambiguation to Bon (disambiguation) and to move this article to Bon. The article traffic for this article is over three times the traffic for disambiguation page itself, as well as any of the pages listed there (except for Bon Festival, but there is no reason for that article to be moved to Bon). - SudoGhost 02:24, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Response to Hans Adler: The Hitler reference was not, in any way, intended as a PA; thus the reason for specifically adding the aside of "but enough about him, merely an exemplar exception" to indicate that there was nothing personal about the reference; it's simply the remote, unique example of a situation where an umlaut is used in English; (without going into it and certainly without intent to offend, I recognize (from personal knowledge of dozens of German people) that most Germans have as much hatred (some more/some less) for Hitler as the rest of the world ever did; the vast majority who would today promote his ideas are non-German 'skinheads' who in no way represent the majority of the German people, and all-in-all, get over it and don't assume that mere mention of his name as a spelling example is intended as a PA (it wasn't).  (Pre-emptively, not to insinuate that you have or would, but don't try to paint me as anti-German as provision of additional facts would end up making the assertion look foolish; enough said.) 

And clearly "Bön" is not Tibetan for this religion; according to the article, "བོན་" is; to my knowledge that unique Asian culture has no use for the Roman/English/Latin/German/etc character set; and as for it not being a part of English, the RS seem fairly clearly decided that the common English spelling is "Bon"; irrespective of whether or not the religion itself has already, or does in future, spread to the English world.  I must say, I am confused by the assertion that description of it as religion is at least mildly POV; however, the double move resulting in this article at "Bon" fortunately renders that line of discourse moot and unnecessary.

And as to Webster's Dictionary of Geographic Names, it is, as the title indicates, a list of foreign places.  As mentioned in conversations elsewhere, articles in English WP about foreign people/places occurring in foreign lands should, if the majority of English RS so dictate, include Latin based diacritics (of course assuming diacritics exist in the foreign spelling); conversely, people, things, ideas that become resident, or common-place topics, in English countries should, according to the dictate of Engish RS, be spelled without diacritics; and purely hypothetically and for arguments' sake, places (as might be found in a Dictionary of Geographic Names) should be spelled with diacritics while they are resident in foreign lands and the diacritics should be dropped whenever those places immigrate to an English country, as will no doubt be indicated by English RS if and when it next happens that a town/city/jurisdiction gets up and moves to another (in this case English) country.  I trust you've noticed that, despite the diversity (and occasional lunacy) of the above arguments, the one consistent factor is that determination is always made by the English RS (never by the Wikipedian).

And FYI, your idea that "café", "façade", and most of the other words with diacritics are spelled that way in English stems from an apparent misunderstanding; the fact that the dictionary refers to these as alternate forms, etc in indicative of the fact that they are not spelled this way in normal English.  As a Canadian, if I'm trying to be exceedingly respectful and deferential in writing to a Quebecois, I might spell it Québec, but that accent acute is, far more often than not, dropped, even when a document is written in French by a Francophone; and you'll never find an English spelling (at least in North America) of café except for those rare occasions where the intent of the acute is to imply snobbishness and an exclusivity intent on exclusion of the riff-raff.  Just for your understanding, unnecessary application of diacritics is most commonly viewed as a sign of arrogance, which aristocrats commonly pursue in furtherance of they sense of exclusivity and superiority, and which the common populace almost invariably shun, as common North American practice is for the masses to have no wish to associate with, and in fact a desire to avoid, those seeking to exhibit a sense of artificial or unnecessary grandeur, pomp and circumstance.  Wikipedia is about providing (accurate) information to the masses; in some circumstances, for example asserting that cafe is spelled café, inappropriate use of diacritics will be taken as an indication that the information provided here is primarily an irrelevant database of sanctimonious, ceremonial, condescending, hoity-toity, information of little use to the masses.  I recommend viewing it as diacritics when exclusion of them would be a mistake; not addition of them when they can be used to make something appear more inaccessible to the general public.  (Sorry for the diatribe.)

Lastly, unless there is contention to the move (we still haven't heard from SudoGhost on the proposal) there is, as far as I know, no requirement for an RS for this move.  I trust you'll point me to the appropriate guideline should I be mistaken; but, assuming unanimous agreement by SudoGhost and Greg L, I will (or someone else can) simply make the moves without an RM.  Prost! — Who R you? Talk 04:42, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Some points purely for information: I agree with your point about unnecessary diacritics and actually feel the same. But due to geographical and cultural proximity to France, but also to several other countries, the line that distinguishes necessary and unecessary diacritics runs quite a different course in British academia than it does in the general public of the US, with educated anglophone Canadians probably being somewhere in the middle. I chose Webster's etc. as an example because it's a key dictionary of foreign words for use in English. There are no comparable dictionaries of foreign proper names or foreign terms for use in English. AFAIK, "Bon" hasn't made it into standard English dictionaries yet, unlike "Buddhism", for example. (Has someone checked the OED?) Oh, and "Führer"/"Fuehrer" isn't the only umlaut word in English. "Götterdämmerung"/"Goetterdaemmerung" is another example. (Not that I am proud of that one, either. I can see a trend.) Hans Adler 09:21, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

OED Online – World English version – Bon (Also O-Bon) – a Japanese Buddhist festival...; Bön – No Match.

On the other topic, I think I'd call it an English (language) tradition; if it's a "good", happy, cheery word, or just something we'd generally like to be associated with, we'll have it in a purely Anglicized form in no time; but the more we'd like to act as if it is completely separate from us, the less we will adapt it's form to resemble our own; for example: No English speaker has ever engaged in Schadenfreude {total sarcasm}; (although I'm not too sure how we'd Anglicize it other than perhaps "Sch"→"Sh" – I guess maybe "Shaddenfroyde"); but that would be an acknowledgment that such a concept had a place in English (language) and, by extension, existed in our culture(s); but, if it meant "Happy, happy, joy, joy", don't think it wouldn't be strenuously argued as being a centuries old English word, and spelled as such.   (And interestingly, I'll share my OR just because I did the queries (all languages); Fuehrer – gNews:25 • gBooks:656,000 — Fuhrer – gNews:170 • gBooks:1,140,000 — Führer – gNews:2,990 • gBooks:13,900,000 — It is simply our nature (perhaps simple human nature), use every trick in the book to disassociate every negative concept from oneself (or one's own self-image); if one can find a way to self-delude oneself into associating what one views as a negative with another [despite the fact that it might exist in one's self, whether in lesser, equal, or greater abundance], most will.)  Anyways, ttyl, (and I hope trust you'll support the move).  Cheers — Who R you? Talk 05:11, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. @SudoGhost: Excellent, I'm very glad to see an amicable consensus could be achieved.  I'm sure that Greg L will be by before too long, and I trust agree, so then we can make the moves and have this resolved.

@All: Thanks to everyone.

• I agree. As Hans wrote, the best approach is a formal WP:RM request for Bon -> Bon (disambiguation), followed by a move Bön -> Bon. Greg L (talk) 06:30, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

• See below.— Who R you? Talk 03:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Problem citation link

The following citation in the Further reading: section:

Pegg, Carole (2006). Inner Asia Religious Contexts: Folk-religious Practices, Shamanism, Tantric Buddhist Practices. Oxford University Press. Grove Music Online. Source: http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/srticle.html?section=music.05283#music.05283 (accessed: January 17, 2007)

links to the Oxford press site; however, a subscription to the site is apparently required, users are therefore unable to read the further reading, something which I suspect most readers would find frustrating.  Does anyone know of any other links to this information which would be freely accessible to readers without a need to subscribe?  If not, I'd suggest that the link be deleted leaving just the reference (and an ISBN # or equivalent if on exists); so that readers can pursue the information for themselves without feeling somehow suckered to a site that's asking them to subscribe (even if it is Oxford). — Who R you? Talk 06:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think any further reading content should link to a paywall. - SudoGhost 06:51, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'll take a look then, and if you haven't already removed the link portion, I will. — Who R you? Talk 11:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 14:53, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

---

• Bön → Bon
• Bon → Bon (disambiguation)

– Bon is the correct (i.e. most common English usage) spelling of this article's topic, and this article should be so named.  This article (currently entitled Bön) is the most natural topic for "Bon" and thus should replace the disambiguation page to be the one associated with the keyword "Bon"; a tophat will be added to lead readers to the "Bon (disambiguation)" page.  This article (currently Bön) has over three times the traffic of the disambiguation page (See SudoGhost's post in earlier talk section).  None of the other topics on the disambiguation page would be appropriate as the natural target for keyword "Bon".  The current title of this article "Bön" does not represent the most common English usage for this foreign topic, and this article (likely) only exists with its current title because the disambiguation page is already using the appropriate title Bon. — Who R you? Talk 03:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support – My nomination – support as per reason in move request, as per the three tremendously long conversations about this, earlier on this talk page, which eventually arrived at unanimous consensus that this double move is the logical, correct, and appropriate resolution. — Who R you? Talk 03:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support as this is the English language Wikipedia, we should go by the english sources. GoodDay (talk) 04:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Although the article's subject is referred to as Bön in English reliable sources, it is not the common spelling of the article's subject. Article traffic and WP:COMMONNAME both support this move. - SudoGhost 13:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. "Bon" appears to be the more common spelling for the topic of this article, which also appears to be the most significant meaning of "Bon". Hans Adler 14:22, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. The preponderance of most-reliable, English-language RSs use “Bon”. To make the article title compliant with the RSs, a wiki-standard way is “Bon (religion)” and that one particular way is most suitable given the disambiguation issues. Greg L (talk) 16:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
  • That sounds like an oppose, with an alternative; I like the alternative Bon (religion). Dicklyon (talk) 02:25, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose; there's no way this is the primary topic in English. Powers ^T 21:09, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

With respect, if you don't have an argument to back it up, "there's no way" doesn't hold any weight. However, just to clear up any confusion, we'll review the article traffic for the disambiguation page and all the pages listed there:

Bon - 2631

Cap Bon - 613

Flamingo International Airport - 1560

North Station - 2574

Bon (surname) - 134

Bon Scott - 51203

Bön - 9695

Bon Festival - 10458

Bon (programming language) - 492

Business Object Notation - 228

Band Ohne Namen - 577

Bon (finance) - 0

The Bon Marché - 2301

Bon Ice - 279

Bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw - 1472

Bankon language - 168

The only two that have a higher traffic than this article is Bon Scott and Bon Festival. Bon Scott was the lead singer of AC/DC, and there's no reason for the article to be at Bon. Bon Festival is apparently misnamed, as the WP:COMMONNAME based on the reliable sources in that article give the name as Obon, not Bon (see the talk page there, I'm not the only one that came to this conclusion). Therefore the Bon Festival article would not belong at Bon. None of the others come anywhere close to matching the traffic of Bön. Even the current disambiguation page at Bon, which is the next highest one, was only at 2631 hits. That this article has over three times the traffic of any other article that would belong at Bon, including the current disambiguation page itself, shows that this is the primary topic for Bon. - SudoGhost 21:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. It has to have more hits than all the other uses combined. There are just too many other uses, and this one is not well known enough. Powers ^T 03:44, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

First of all, what you are relying on here is not a strict rule but is mentioned by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as something that is "commonly discussed in connection with primary topics". Another aspect mentioned in precisely the same way is importance ("significantly greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term"). Second, most entries on the disambiguation page do not really put any claim to the name "Bon", as opposed to different spellings such as "BON" or "Bon" as part of a longer name such as "Cape Bon":

• Cap Bon. It seems very unlikely that someone refers to this just as "Bon" or searches for it in this form. Certainly makes no sense as a title,.
• Flamingo International Airport has IATA code "BON" not "Bon". May occasionally be referred to as "Bonaire", but certainly not as "Bon".
• North Station has Amtrak code "BON" not "Bon". May occasionally be referred to as "Boston", but certainly not as "Bon".
• Bon Scott. Someone's first name makes no sense as an article title.
• Business Object Notation is abbreviated "BON", not "Bon".
• Band Ohne Namen is abbreviated "B.O.N." or maybe "BON" or "BoN", but certainly not "BoN".
• Bon Ice. I could find no indication on the web that this Latin American product is occasionally referred to as just "Bon", not even in Spanish.
• The Bon Marché. This is a local shop which for some years was known just as "The Bon". Just "Bon" makes no sense as an article title, and it appears very unlikely that someone searches for it in this form.
• Bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw is also known as "BON of the jaw", not "Bon".

On the other hand we have:

• Bon (surname) [134]
• Bon Festival [10458]
• Bon (finance), a serious contender if someone were actually interested in the topic [0]
• Bon (programming language) is actually named after the topic of this article -- an indication of the importance of the Bon religion. (This could be a reasonable candidate for the primary topic if it were a lot more important -- compare the case of Ubuntu --, but it isn't.) [492]
• Bankon language could in principle be a serious contender, but it's just too obscure for that and has too many names of which "Bon" seems to be one of the less common. [168]

So for those other articles which might actually be titled "Bon", or which someone might reasonably search for by just entering "Bon", the total count is 11252. With 9695 views, the Bon religion has almost as many views as these together, which looks good. The only serious problem is that Bon Festival actually has more views than the Bon religion and is clearly a topic of comparable encyclopedic importance. IMO the best solution is to put the religion under Bon anyway, with head links to both Bon Festival and another to Bon (disambiguation). Part of my rationale is that "Bon" is equally referred to as "Obon", and a >1000-year-old religion is slightly more important than a 500-year old festival. Hans Adler 17:07, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I just don't find the argument persuasive, and it's up to the proponents to prove the case for renaming. The word "Bon" just has too many possible meanings in too many different languages for me to be comfortable assuming the reader wants to read about a niche branch of Buddhism. Powers ^T 18:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

• It appears, to me, that your opposition is more a question of being against this topic being promoted as opposed to a problem with reader accessibility; and by that I simply mean that the problem, as I take your argument to be, doesn't seem to be that there is any other article that someone would actually ever look for, and be mistakenly brought to this article; rather, your opposition seems to be simply that you don't want any kind of "promotion" of this topic.  Personally, I don't care one way or the other about the topic, the religion; it seems rather obscure to me and traffic stats in the thousands seems to bare that out; but, that said, everything else is far more obscure.
  I trust you aren't arguing that "Bon Scott" is the natural target for this, or that any of the other options could be for that matter, with the singular exception of "Bon Festival", but that seems to me like saying that "Street" shouldn't point to "Street" because someone might be searching for "Streetcar" (ok, bad analogy but you get the point).  If there's something else that you think "Bon" should point to, please direct me to it; if there's something else that you think a reader would be looking for, but might instead be inappropriately directed to this page, please identify it.
  In terms of a paper encyclopedia, this is like having an Index entry entitled "Bon" which, when one flips to the identified page, contains nothing more than an Index entry to a bunch of pages with "Bon" in the term and one page actually named "Bon"; it seems, to me, like creating an extra step for those readers that are searching for this topic.  When compared to the existing disambiguation page, almost 4 times as many people have gone searching for this topic, and presumably at least some of those who viewed the disambiguation page in the first place eventually navigated to this article, skewing the numbers even more.  Anyways, I'm curious what other article, in your opinion, readers are more likely to be looking for when searching the term "Bon". — Who R you? Talk 19:45, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
  • It's not just one article, it's the fact that the word has so many meanings. Granted, we don't have articles that correspond to all of those meanings, but there are enough that I can't support the assumption of any one particular meaning as primary. It's like tear; we have only one article that's actually named "Tear" but there are too many other possibilities for what the reader/searcher could mean to justify it being anything but a disambiguation page. In my book, when in doubt, disambiguate, because it means just one click for everyone instead of two clicks for some people. Powers ^T 02:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• I guess it's an honest difference of opinion there; I'd say it makes more sense to have 2,500 people make two clicks than 10,000 make one.  For me it's just a simple math thing of 2,500 × 2 < 10,000 × 1, but I see your point, just don't agree :).  Plus, if the tophat includes a double also see for both "Bon Festival" and "Bon (disambiguation)" then all those 2 clicks that would eventually end up at "Bon Festival" would get there in one.  I also just can't think of what these so many other meanings could be; but that might just be a lack of creativity on my part.  And while I don't necessarily believe that a great number of additional people are going to be interested in this religion, some may find it an interesting read and I certainly don't see a down side to people arriving here even if it's not the topic they were searching for (and I say that as a Christian, who certainly wouldn't promote any other religion).  But it's your !vote and you've made your point clearly and concisely.  Cheers — Who R you? Talk 13:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
  P.S.  What would your alternative suggestion be?  Should the article remain where it is, at "Bön"?
  • I would have to do some investigation to see if the spelling with the diaeresis is common in English-language sources. If so, it's a perfectly good title as-is; if not, Bon (religion) works well. Powers ^T 21:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose – being most common, on in someone's opinion most significant, is not enough for WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. There are many alternatives to disambiguate among in this case. I support Greg L's alternative "Bon (religion)". Dicklyon (talk) 02:25, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:PRECISE. Parenthetical disambiguations are used if natural disambiguations are not possible. - SudoGhost 13:31, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support. 'Bon' is the most common English spelling, and the correct Wylie transliteration. I disagree that this is not the most notable topic for 'Bon' in English -- Bon Festival is probably the only meaning that that comes close to Bon as a religion in terms of notability, but that is generally refered to as "Bon festival". IMO the correct solution is to move this article to Bon, and move the extisting Bon to Bon (disambiguation). BabelStone (talk) 23:48, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Britannica gives this name without a diacritic. They would certainly put one in if it was correct to do so. Bon: The Magic Word, one of the top selling books on the this subject, also goes diacritic-free. As others have mentioned, so does the Bon Foundation. Japan's Bon Festival is the only other contender as a target for the term "Bon," and that is already satisfactorily disambiguated. Kauffner (talk) 10:12, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

a branch of Tibetan Vajrayana?

"Bon or Bön(Tibetan: བོན་, Wylie: bon [pʰø̃̀(n)]) is a branch of Tibetan Vajrayana." this is strange. If you ask someone who believes in Bon, he won't agree. --Danielinblue (talk) 11:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Shamanic traditions in Tibet

http://www.tibetanresearch.org/Shamanism.htm. I think this has some concise info on Bon. Komitsuki (talk) 14:29, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Opening section makes no sense

The first couple sentences of this article seem to be refuting an argument or viewpoint that hasn't even been introduced. It doesn't make sense to someone unfamiliar with the subject. If there's some dispute over the age of the religion, it should be in the body of the text, not the first paragraph. I don't know enough about the subject to edit this properly but someone should. --109.158.214.140 (talk) 15:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

What is Bon/Bön?

This question should be answered in the very first sentence. Every Wikipedia article should explain what that, which the article is about, is, in its very first sentence. This is in order for the reader to know what it is she is actually reading about, as reading an article about something that you don't know what it is is quite pointless. This article fails to explain what Bön or Bon is (at least as far I have wanted to read), and since it's still a bit unclear to me what it actually is, someone else should probably make the article explain this. —Kri (talk) 20:55, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@Kri, VictoriaGrayson, Ogress, K6ka, Tombreaper, and Danielinblue:

"The term Bön has two different designations in the Tibetan and Bhutanese world when used in reference to a religious tradition. The word Bön is used to refer to the form of religion which is thought to have arrived in Tibet before Buddhism was introduced and which co-existed with Buddhism to some extent after the introduction of Buddhism despite periodic tensions and conflicts between the adherents of the two religions. This Bön was then considered to have been Tibet's old religion. It took a highly institutionalized and Buddhicized form during the time of the Latter Diffusion and exists to this day with very sophisticated doctrinal and practice systems. It shares a great deal of similarity with tthe Buddhist traditions of Tibet and is today often referred to as the fifth religious tradition of Tibet in addition to the four main Buddhist schools. The term Bön is also often employed, inaccurately, to refer to the numerous pre-Buddhist practices across the Himalayas. A wide variety of local rituals and practices found in Bhutan which are shamanistic, animistic or paganistic are often mistakenly branded as Bön for the simple reason of being pre- or non-Buddhist. In this use it designates what R.A. Stein called the 'nameless religion', comprising the diverse folk beliefs found in their localized variations with or without some influence of the institutional Bön and/or Buddhist practices."

Source: Khenpo Dr.Karma Phuntsho (2013). The History of Bhutan. Nodia: Random House India. pp. 135–136. ISBN 9788184003116.

Chris Fynn (talk) 09:42, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

"Bon is one of the pre-Buddhist religions in Tibet. By the term 'pre-Buddhist' here I mean that it existed in Tibet before Buddhism was imported into the area and that it has survived till the present time. Although various definitions of Bon have been proposed, it could be properly said that, in Bonpo culture, we perceive something essential or basic, that has pervaded Tibetan culture from ancient times to the present day. Bon is therefore an important cultural substratum in Tibet."

Source: Yasuhiko Nagano (2003). "A Survey of Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibet and the Himalaya". Tibetan & Himalayan Library. National Museum of Ethnology. {{cite web}}: |chapter= ignored (help)

Chris Fynn (talk) 11:18, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Geoffrey Samuel says:

"The term Bön and its derivative Bönpo have been employed by many Tibetan and Western scholars to refer variously to all sorts of allegedly pre-Buddhist and non-Buddhist elements of Tibetan religion, often including the folk-religion cults of local deities...Such usage conflates so many different things under the one label that serious analysis becomes impossible...While there are some grounds for using the term Bön for the early religion of Tibet, there are few for applying it to the cults of local gods and spirits as they exist today, and I shall avoid using Bön to refer to this contemporary 'folk religion'...The religious order of Bön...is similar in form and nature to the religious orders of Tibetan Buddhism, but claims to derive from the teachings of the pre-Buddhist master Shenrab Mibo rather than historical Buddha Śākyamuni. This modern Bön religion has shamanic and clerical aspects similar to those of modern Tibetan Buddhism....Tibetan folk-religion, then, is 'shamanic', in my sense, but it is to be distinguished from the shamanic aspects of Tibetan Buddhism (and also of the modern Bön religion, which is essentially, in this context, a variant of Buddhism)." - Geoffrey Samuel (1993), Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, pp. 10-12.

This quote shows that the modern religious sect of Bön is virtually a sect of Tibetan Buddhism, but describing Bön as a sect of Buddhism is simplistic interpretation. Tombreaper (talk) 12:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it's misleading to say that Bon is "a sect of Tibetan Buddhism". Its adherents do not self-identify as a sect of Tibetan Buddhism, do they? I understand that current scholarship disputes Bon claims of preceding Tibetan Buddhism. But to say that Bon arose as an identifiable tradition contemporaneously with the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet, and shared many traits with Buddhism, is quite different from saying it is a sect of Buddhism. Bertport (talk) 03:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I stand for Bertport's opinion. "A sect of Tibetan Buddhism" is not proper definition of Bon, but a western scholarly interpretation of the existing religious order of the self-proclaimed "Yungdrung Bon".--Tombreaper (talk) 21:07, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

@Bertport and Tombreaper: The Dalai Lama has written: "if we look from the point of view of the original stock of teachings that are at its core, we have to say that Bön is a separate tradition from Buddhism. We cannot consider it one of the Buddhist traditions since then it would need a traceable Buddhist source." - Tenzin Gyatsho, Dalai Lama XIV. "The Gelug / Kagyü Tradition of Mahamudra". p. 228. Chris Fynn (talk) 15:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Who cares about the Dalai Lama's opinion? The Dalai Lama, like all lamas, believes that terma history is actual history. When its not.VictoriaGrayson^Talk 15:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Gods

It said in the article that, the chief gods the White Old Man and his consort. I've read on other sites, regarding Bon, that their chief deity is a mother goddess named 'Yum.'--Splashen (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Bon/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This article is becoming worse and worse. It contains lots of irrelevant material, marginally relevant material, unusual spelling etc. Menmo (talk) 19:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 14:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC). Substituted at 10:01, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Bon. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110628000301/http://ir.minpaku.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10502/1286/1/SER15_004.pdf to http://ir.minpaku.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10502/1286/1/SER15_004.pdf

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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 04:34, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Theology?

The article is missing notes on the theological doctrine of Bon, which I feel is a must-have for any article concerning religion. The Verified Cactus 100% 22:38, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

@VerifiedCactus: As mentioned in the article, Bon shares a lot of overlap with the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet. Theology proper is not really much of a concern in Buddhism unless you use it very broadly to speak about any supernatural persons. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:12, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I see, thanks. The Verified Cactus 100% 13:29, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

New Edits

Made extensive edits to the opening paragraph, as it was misleading and poorly sourced. I also moved the definitions section to the top and filled it out with scholarly sources. 2607:F2C0:9379:4E00:48FF:46B6:8BF8:879F (talk) 01:37, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

History section

The article is missing all mention of the religion prior to what is termed "rediscovery". Since it precedes the arrival of Buddhism I expect to read about this time period, its relationship with Buddhism, the conversion of Tibet and how the religions coexisted/not coexisted. Right now, it reads as though someone discovered an ancient religion in the late Middle Ages, which does not sound right. 134.100.201.250 (talk) 12:55, 30 June 2020 (UTC)