Abstract
In the Tibetan milieu, alongside Buddhist schools based on the heritage of mainly Indian Buddhist textual sources, there is also an unorthodox Buddhist tradition known as Bön. However, the term bön is clouded and confusing because it is used in different contexts and from different perspectives.
However, it is also, among other things, the designation of a monastic universal religion, which understands the term as an alternative Tibetan translation of the Indian word "dharma" denoting Buddhism. The main difference from other Tibetan Buddhist schools lies in the founding figure of this religion, who is not Buddha Shakyamuni but Tönpa (Buddha) Shenrab Miwo.
Followers of the Bön tradition see him as a person far predating the historical Buddha, who in turn is considered to be a reincarnation of one of Tönpa Shenrab Miwo's disciples. This paper also examines earlier representations of Shenrab Miwo in non-Buddhist sources, in which he appears as a mythical ritualist offering animal sacrifices.
His contrasting images seem irreconcilable, but from the extant non-Buddhist collections of myths we can discern the main features of the process of Shenrab Miwo's transformation from mythical ritualist into the founding figure of the universal religious tradition of Bön.