title: Napa cabbage

text: Anhracnose is a brassica disease caused by "Colletotrichum higginsianum" that is especially damaging on napa cabbage, pak choi, turnip, rutabaga and tender green mustard. The symptoms are dry pale gray to straw spots or lesions on the leaves. The recommended management practices are the same as for "Alternaria" diseases.


title: Napa cabbage

text: Black root is a disease that infects mainly radish, but it also occurs on many other brassica vegetables inclusively napa cabbage. It caused by the fungus "Aphanomyces raphani". The pathogen can persist for long times in the soil, therefore crop rotations are an essential management tool.


title: Napa cabbage

text: White leaf spot is found primarily in temperate climate regions and is important on vegetable brassicas and oilseed rape. The causal organism is "Mycosphaerella capsellae". The symptoms are white spots on leaves, stems and pods and can thus easily be confused with those of downy mildew. The disease spreads especially fast with rain or moisture and temperature is between .


title: Napa cabbage

text: Yellows, also called Fusarium wilt, is another "Brassica" disease that infects oilseed rape, cabbage, mustards, Napa cabbage and other vegetable brassicas. It is only a problem in regions with warm growing seasons where soil temperatures are in the range of 18 to 32 °C. The causal organism is "Fusarium oxysporum "f. sp." conlutinans". Napa cabbage is relatively tolerant to the disease; mostly the only external symptoms are yellowing of lower, older leaves. The disease is soil borne and can survive for many years in the absence of a host. Most cruciferous weeds can serve as alternate hosts.


title: Napa cabbage

text: Damping-Off is a disease in temperate areas caused by soil inhabiting oomycetes like "Phytophthora cactorum" and "Pythium" spp. The disease concerns seedlings, which often collapse and die.


title: Napa cabbage

text: Bacterial soft rot is considered one of the most important diseases of vegetable brassicas. The disease is particularly damaging in warm humid climate. The causal organisms are "Erwinia carotovora" var. "carotovora" and "Pseudomonas marginalis" pv. "marginalis". The rot symptoms can occur in the field, on produce transit or in storage.


title: Napa cabbage

text: Bacteria survive mainly on plant residues in the soil. They are spread by insects and by cultural practices, such as irrigation water and farm machinery. The disease is tolerant to low temperatures; it can spread in storages close to 0 °C, by direct contact and by dripping onto the plants below.


title: Napa cabbage

text: Bacterial soft rot is more severe on crops which have been fertilized too heavily with nitrogen, had late nitrogen applications, or are allowed to become over-mature before harvesting.


title: Napa cabbage

text: Black rot, the most important disease of vegetable brassicas, is caused by "Xanthomonas campestris" pv. "campestris".


title: Napa cabbage

text: Nematodes are disease agents that are often overlooked but they can cause considerable yield losses. The adult nematodes have limited active movement but their eggs contained within cysts (dead females) are readily spread with soil, water, equipment or seedlings.


title: Scrying

text: Scrying, also known by various names such as "seeing" or "peeping", is the practice of looking into a suitable medium in the hope of detecting significant messages or visions. The objective might be personal guidance, prophecy, revelation, or inspiration, but down the ages, scrying in various forms also has been a means of divination or fortune-telling. It remains popular in occult circles, discussed in many media, both modern and centuries old.


title: Scrying

text: There is no definitive distinction between scrying and other aids to clairvoyance, augury, or divination, but roughly speaking, scrying depends on fancied impressions of visions in the medium of choice. Ideally in this respect it differs from augury, which relies on interpretations of objectively observable objects or events (such as flight of birds); from divination, which depends on standardized processes or rituals; from oneiromancy, which depends on the interpretation of dreams; from the physiological effects of psychoactive drugs; and from clairvoyance, which notionally does not depend on objective sensory stimuli. Clairvoyance in other words, is regarded as amounting in essence to extrasensory perception.


title: Scrying

text: Scrying is neither a single, clearly defined, nor formal discipline and there is no uniformity in the procedures, which repeatedly and independently have been reinvented or elaborated in many ages and regions. Furthermore, practitioners and authors coin terminology so arbitrarily, and often artificially, that no one system of nomenclature can be taken as authoritative and definitive. Commonly terms in use are Latinisations or of descriptions of the media or activities. Examples of names coined for crystal gazing include 'crystallomancy', 'spheromancy', and 'catoptromancy'. As an example of the looseness of such terms, catoptromancy should refer more specifically to scrying by use of mirrors or other reflective objects rather than by crystal gazing. Other names that have been coined for the use of various scrying media include anthracomancy for glowing coals, turifumy for scrying into smoke, and hydromancy for scrying into water. There is no clear limit to the coining and application of such terms and media.


title: Scrying

text: Scrying has been practiced in many cultures in the belief that it can reveal the past, present, or future. Some practitioners assert that visions that come when one stares into the media are from the subconscious or imagination, while others say that they come from gods, spirits, devils, or the psychic mind, depending on the culture and practice. There is neither any systematic body of empirical support for any such views in general however, nor for their respective rival merits; individual preferences in such matters are arbitrary.


title: Scrying

text: The media most commonly used in scrying are reflective, refractive, translucent, or luminescent surfaces or objects such as crystals, stones, or glass in various shapes such as crystal balls, mirrors, reflective black surfaces such as obsidian, water surfaces, fire, or smoke, but there is no special limitation on the preferences or prejudices of the scryer; some may stare into pitch dark, clear sky, clouds, shadows, or light patterns against walls, ceilings, or pond beds. Some prefer glowing coals or shimmering mirages. Some simply close their eyes, notionally staring at the insides of their own eyelids, and speak of "eyelid scrying".


title: Scrying

text: Scrying media generally either suggest images directly (such as figures in fire, fluid eddies or clouds), or else they distort or reflect the observers' vision confusingly, in the manner to be seen in crystals or transparent balls. Such fancies have long been satirised by sceptics, for example in "Hamlet" III.ii:


title: Scrying

text: Alternatively the medium might reduce visual stimuli to thresholds below which any clear impressions could interfere with fancied visions or free association. Examples include darkened reflections of night sky, or plain shadow or darkness.


title: Scrying

text: One class of methods of scrying involves a self-induced trance, with or without the aid of a medium such as a crystal ball or, even via modern technology such as a smartphone among other things. Some say that the sensation is drug-like, some that various drugs can potentiate the experience; others categorically exclude any connection with drug usage, claiming that it invalidates any images observed.


title: Scrying

text: Many practitioners say that the scrying medium initially serves to focus attention, removing unwanted thoughts from the mind in much the same way as repetition of a mantra, concentration on a mandala, inducing the relaxation response, or possibly by hypnosis. Once this stage is achieved, the scryer may begin free association with the perceived images. The technique of deliberately looking for and declaring these initial images aloud, however trivial or irrelevant they may seem to the conscious mind, attempts to deepen the trance state. In this state some scryers hear their own disassociated voices affirming what they see, in a mental feedback loop.


title: Scrying

text: Practitioners apply the process until they achieve a satisfactory state of perception in which rich visual images and dramatic stories seem to be projected within the medium itself, or in the mind's eye of the scryer. They claim that the technique allows them to see relevant events or images within the chosen medium.


title: Scrying

text: Nostradamus practiced scrying; he would stare into a bowl of water or a "magic mirror" to see the future while he was in trance.


title: Scrying

text: Divination is briefly mentioned in chapter 44 of the Book of Genesis. A silver chalice or cup is deliberately planted in Benjamin's sack when he leaves Egypt, later to be used as evidence of theft. It is revealed the cup belongs to Joseph, the vizier of Egypt, whose steward claimed was used for drinking and divination during the course of his accusation. This is mentioned to reinforce his disguise as an Egyptian nobleman. Nothing in the book of Genesis indicates that Joseph actually used the cup for divination.


title: Scrying

text: The "Shahnameh", a 10th-century epic work narrating historical and mythological past of Persia, gives a description of what was called the Cup of Jamshid ("Jaam-e Jam"), which was used by the ancient (mythological) Persian kings for observing all of the seven layers of the universe. The cup was said to contain an elixir of immortality, but without cogent explanation for any relevance of the elixir to the scrying function.


title: Scrying

text: In the late 1820s, Joseph Smith founded the Latter Day Saint movement based in part on what was said to be information obtained miraculously from the reflections of seer stones. Smith had at least three separate stones, including his favorite, a brown stone he found during excavation of a neighbor's well. He initially used these stones in various treasure-digging quests in the early 1820s, placing the stone inside the crown of his hat and putting his face in the hat to read what he believed were the miraculous reflections from the stone. Smith also said that he had access to a separate set of spectacles composed of seer stones, which he called the Urim and Thummim. He said that, through these stones, he could translate the golden plates that are the stated source of the Book of Mormon.


title: Scrying

text: Rituals that involve many acts similar to scrying in ceremonial magic are retained in the form of folklore and superstition. A formerly widespread tradition held that young women gazing into a mirror in a darkened room (often on Halloween) could catch a glimpse of their future husband's face in the mirror — or a skull personifying Death if their fate was to die before they married.


title: Scrying

text: Another form of the tale, involving the same actions of gazing into a mirror in a darkened room, is used as a supernatural dare in the tale of "Bloody Mary". Here, the motive is usually to test the adolescent gazers' mettle against a malevolent witch or ghost, in a ritual designed to allow the scryers' easy escape if the visions summoned prove too frightening.


title: Scrying

text: Folklore superstitions such as those just mentioned, are not to be distinguished clearly from traditional tales, within which the reality of such media are taken for granted. In the fairytale of Snow White for example, the jealous queen consults a magic mirror, which she asks "Magic mirror on the wall / Who is the fairest of them all?", to which the mirror always replies "You, my queen, are fairest of all." But when Snow White reaches the age of seven, she becomes as beautiful as the day, and when the queen asks her mirror, it responds: "Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true, but Snow White is fairer than you." There is no uniformity among believers, in how seriously they prefer to take such tales and superstitions.


title: Scrying

text: Scrying is not supported by science as a method of predicting the future or obtaining information unavailable to empirical investigation. Some critics consider it to be a pseudoscience. Skeptics consider scrying to be the result of delusion or wishful thinking.


title: Scrying

text: Psychologist Leonard Zusne suggested that scrying images are hallucinations or hypnagogic experiences.


title: Scrying

text: A 2010 paper in the journal "Perception" identified one specific method of reliably reproducing a scrying illusion in a mirror and hypothesized that it "might be caused by low level fluctuations in the stability of edges, shading and outlines affecting the perceived definition of the face, which gets over-interpreted as ‘someone else’ by the face recognition system."


title: Kent Hovind

text: Kent E. Hovind (born January 15, 1953) is an American Christian fundamentalist evangelist and tax protester. He is a controversial figure in the Young Earth creationist movement whose ministry focuses on denial of scientific theories in the fields of biology (evolution), geophysics, and cosmology in favor of a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative found in the Bible. Hovind's views, which combine elements of creation science and conspiracy theory, are dismissed by the scientific community as fringe theory and pseudo-scholarship. He is controversial within the Young Earth Creationist movement; and, Answers in Genesis openly criticized him for continued use of discredited arguments abandoned by others in the movement.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind established Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) in 1989 and Dinosaur Adventure Land in 2001 in Pensacola, Florida. He frequently spoke on Young Earth creationism in schools, churches, debates, and on radio and television broadcasts. His son Eric Hovind took over operation of CSE after Hovind began serving a ten-year prison sentence in January 2007 for federal convictions for failing to pay taxes, obstructing federal agents, and structuring cash transactions. In September 2021, Hovind was convicted of domestic violence against his estranged wife.


title: Kent Hovind

text: At the age of 16, Hovind became a born-again Christian within the Independent Fundamental Baptist church.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1971, he graduated from East Peoria Community High School in East Peoria, Illinois. He entered Illinois Central College and then transferred to the unaccredited Midwestern Baptist College in 1972, attaining a Bachelor of Religious Education in 1974.


title: Kent Hovind

text: He married his wife Jo in 1973 and they had three children between 1977 and 1979. Between 1975 and 1988, Hovind served as an assistant pastor and teacher at three private Baptist schools, including one he started.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1989, the family moved to Pensacola, Florida, where Jo attended Pensacola Christian College and earned a bachelor's degree in music and master's degrees in music and sacred music.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1998, he created his "Dr. Dino" web site and began producing articles and selling video tapes, books, and fossil replicas. Prior to his incarceration, Hovind had numerous speaking engagements (around 700 in 2004) at churches, private schools, and other venues each year, in addition to hosting a daily internet radio talk show and establishing "Dinosaur Adventure Land" in Pensacola, Florida. In 1999, his son Eric Hovind began traveling to present his arguments and seminars. Kent and Jo divorced in 2016.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1988 and 1991 respectively, Hovind received a master's degree and doctorate in Christian Education through correspondence from (also unaccredited) Patriot University in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Patriot University is a diploma mill.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Having a website called "Dr. Dino" has provoked some academics to look closely at how Hovind presents his education and credentials. All his known degrees are from unaccredited institutions, and he has no training in paleontology. Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy, expert on the history of creationism and activist in the creation–evolution controversy, wrote that Hovind's lack of training makes academic discussion impossible and has said that his understanding of historical and scientific research is deficient. Karen Bartelt, an organic chemistry professor who debated Hovind, examined Hovind's dissertation and found it is incomplete, contains numerous spelling errors, lacks references, shows flawed reasoning, and states that it does not present any original research.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind established Creation Science Evangelism in 1989 to evangelize and teach creationism. In May 1999, his son Eric joined Creation Science Evangelism as a speaker, and his daughter Marlissa began training to become Hovind's secretary. That year, CSE merged with Faith Baptist Fellowship of Hawthorne, Florida, beginning a relationship that lasted until 2002. In 2003, with the aid of Glenn Stoll (a promoter of tax-avoidance schemes), Hovind set up a series of entities starting with "an unincorporated association of pure trust" on May 13, under which a corporation sole and several ministerial trusts were established starting on May 23. CSE properties were conveyed to the trusts which operated under business licenses from the "Kingdom of Heaven".


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind is associated with the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship (UBF), a loosely affiliated group of roughly 100 churches which share a "theology of Christian resistance" to civil governments. Because the UBF would consider it an acknowledgement of government authority over the church, they reject the highly favorable 501(c)3 status, which makes donations tax deductible and exempts them from income tax, but not FICA taxes or employee income tax withholding. The UBF holds that governmental authority stops "at the threshold of the church", and Hovind has likened his ministry's status to that of the Vatican City State. When the federal government obtained a search warrant in 2004, an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) criminal investigator made the sworn statement that the organization did not have a business license and did not have tax-exempt status.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind was convicted of 58 felony counts in November 2006 and sentenced to ten years in prison in January 2007; Eric Hovind took over Creation Science Evangelism. In July 2007, God Quest Inc. was incorporated with Eric Hovind as president, and that November, God Quest Inc. filed in Florida to do business under the trade name Creation Science Evangelism. In June 2008, Eric announced that the CSE website would incorporate the CSE blog and change format allowing for "only positive comments" about Hovind and CSE, and in late 2011, Creation Science Evangelism's "DrDino.com" website was redirected to "CreationToday.org". The new website announced "Creation Today is a ministry of God Quest, Inc." with focus on "creation, apologetics and evangelism."


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 2001 Hovind started Dinosaur Adventure Land, a young Earth creationist theme park located behind Hovind's home in Pensacola. With the slogan, "Where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!", the facility on roughly seven acres had an indoor "Science Center" and an outdoor space with a variety of simple dinosaur-themed rides and activities, each of which was tied to some religious message. For example, the "Jumpasaurus" was a trampoline next to a basketball hoop; children would have one minute to make as many baskets as they could, and the message was that one has to be coordinated to do more for Jesus. Annual attendance was 38,000. The park depicted humans and dinosaurs co-existing in the last 4,000–6,000 years and also contains a depiction of the Loch Ness Monster. The Southern Poverty Law Center said the park also "claims that a few small dinosaurs still roam the planet". A 2004 "Skeptical Inquirer" article discussed a visit to Hovind's dinosaur theme park and concluded that the park is "deceptive on many levels". In "Reports of the National Center for Science Education", George Allan Alderman described it as "essentially a playground with a few exhibits, several fiberglass dinosaurs, a climbing wall, and a couple of buildings." He summarized it as "shabby".


title: Kent Hovind

text: The venture encountered legal issues when the owners did not get a building permit in 2002 (see below). In April 2006, Escambia County officials closed the building in question. In July 2009, the courts ruled that the properties could be seized and sold to satisfy Hovind's criminal penalties (see below). Another Florida ministry theme park, the Holy Land Experience, successfully lobbied for a property tax exemption law for parks "used to exhibit, illustrate, and interpret biblical manuscripts" in 2006; Dinosaur Adventure Land, which was not a 501(c)(3) organization, failed to have the law expanded to be included. Eric Hovind kept the park and CSE operating throughout 2008, but in July 2009, a judge allowed the government seizure to proceed. In August 2009, Dinosaur Adventure Land's website announced it was closed, and CSE announced its re-opening as the "Creation Store" in November 2010.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In April 2016, Hovind discussed plans for a new Dinosaur Adventure Land, which included an 80-foot-tall model dinosaur that would be the largest in the state, with commissioners in Conecuh County, Alabama. A supporter donated a 140-acre parcel of land in Lenox, Alabama, a former gravel pit. Volunteers started work by June 2016, and it opened in April 2018. , attendance exceeded 1,000. Dinosaur Adventure Land is operated by a new 501(c)(3) organization, Creation Science Evangelism Ministries Inc. Its revenue streams are donations, book and DVD sales, and YouTube advertising. There is no admission charge and it operates without liability insurance. Facilities include a science center, a campground, a four-wheeler park, and church services including baptisms.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind presented a version of young Earth creationism he calls the "Hovind Theory" in lectures and in the book "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution". The Hovind Theory is entirely rejected in the scientific community, and its plausibility has even been criticized by other young Earth creationists.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In Hovind's narrative, dinosaurs and humans coexisted and "Tyrannosaurus rex" was a vegetarian prior to the fall of man. Hovind expands upon the late-19th- and early-20th-century vapor canopy concept of a protective shield that made Earth a relative paradise between the expulsion from Paradise and Noah's flood. The flood is expressed as a function of natural rather than miraculous processes. Noah's family and two of every kind of animal (including dinosaurs, which fit because babies were taken aboard and conditions allowed larger humans, making the ark's size, based on cubits, larger) boarded Noah's Ark before an ice meteor impacted the Earth. Fragments from the meteor caused planetary rings and impact craters on the moon and other solar system bodies. The remainder were drawn to the North and South Poles by the Earth's magnetic field as cataclysmic snowfall which buried the mammoths standing up. The ice on the poles cracked the Earth's crust, releasing the "fountains of the deep". According to Hovind, these events caused an ice age, and made the Earth wobble around, collapsing the vapor canopy that protected it.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In the next few months of the flood, the dead animals and plants were buried, and became oil, coal, and fossils. The last months of the flood included geological instability, when the plates shifted, forming ocean basins and mountain ranges. The Grand Canyon was formed in a couple of weeks during this time.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In a rare case of open dissent within the movement over the substance of creation science, Answers in Genesis (AiG) published a 2002 position paper titled: "Arguments we think creationists should NOT use". After Hovind issued a point-by-point rebuttal, Carl Wieland, Ken Ham, and Jonathan Sarfati of AiG wrote that the claims made by Hovind were "fraudulent" and contained "mistakes in facts and logic which do the creationist cause no good." In particular, AiG criticized Hovind for "persistently us[ing] discredited or false arguments" as well as "fraudulent claims" from Ron Wyatt, and described one of Hovind's claims as "self-refuting". Rancorous disagreements resulted in AiG splitting into U.S. and Australian chapters in 2005. The Australian branch, renamed Creation Ministries International (CMI), maintained content critical of Hovind on their website, while the U.S. branch, led by Ken Ham, removed it. In 2009, CMI said that they had relaxed their stance because CSE's revamped website had removed some of Hovind's claims to which they objected.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Greg Neyman, an old-Earth creationist who runs the Old Earth Ministries website (renamed from Answers in Creation), writes that Hovind's articles about humans and dinosaurs coexisting are unsupported by evidence and that they "embarrass the young earth creation science community as a whole".


title: Kent Hovind

text: To the Orthodox Jewish creationist, Hovind's approach relies upon a strict literal reading of the King James translation. Where Jews interpret the Hebrew through Talmud and Midrash, Hovind relies on a direct reading of English. For example, Hovind claims that the word "dinosaur", which was introduced to English in 1841, refers to what previously had been called "dragon". Dragon is used where "tannin" () appears, but it means "serpent" or "crocodile".


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind contends that "Darwinism" produced "Communism, Socialism, Nazism, abortion, liberalism and the New Age Movement". He blamed the forced Cherokee resettlement on a belief in evolution, although the Trail of Tears preceded "Origin of Species" by roughly two decades. Hovind maintains that biology textbooks are lying in order to brainwash youth. He said, "Satan is using evolution theory to make kids go to hell." Hovind claims he is not trying to eliminate evolution from schools, but says "schools should teach both viewpoints." Hovind said that in order to forge "missing link" transitional fossils to support human evolution, the Smithsonian Institution has 33,000 sets of human remains in its basement, some taken alive (murder). In an interview prior to speaking at Kent State University, Hovind said "You should have another rebellion here at Kent State and do it for the right reason," the reason being protesting evolution and referred to the Kent State shootings when he added, "This time, don't get shot."


title: Kent Hovind

text: In the pseudoscience of cryptozoology, Hovind published and co-authored "Claws, Jaws, and Dinosaurs" with , another Creationist who has searched for dinosaurs in the Congo under the belief that discovering a cryptid would somehow undermine evolutionary theory and that dinosaurs were dragons. Dinosaur Adventure Land had displays about the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and "Beowulf" as history rather than legend.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Prior to his convictions, Hovind was a prolific debater. While Hovind campaigns against evolution, the level of support for evolution is essentially universal within the scientific community and academia; support for creationism is minimal among scientists in general, and virtually nonexistent among those in the relevant fields: biology, paleontology, geology, "etc". C. A. Chinn and L. A. Buckland classify his debate style, common among Young Earth Creationists, as eristic: focused on winning by rhetoric rather than illuminating by careful examination of evidence.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1993, Hovind announced that he would be debating the renowned evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, who had a longstanding opposition to debating Creationists and had turned down numerous challenges. When contacted about the announcement, Gould said he had never heard of Hovind, much less agreed to debate.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In May 2004, Michael Shermer debated Hovind in front of a predominantly creationist audience. Shermer claimed the exchange was "not an intellectual exercise", but rather "an emotional drama," and concluded, "Unless there is a subject that is truly debatable with a format that is fair, in a forum that is balanced, it only serves to belittle both the magisterium of science and the magisterium of religion." Massimo Pigliucci also debated Hovind, and expressed surprise at Hovind's ignorance of evolutionary theory. Pigliucci recalled Hovind tried "to convince the audience that evolutionists believe humans came from rocks" and subsequently "evolved from bananas." William Reville, Director of Microscopy at University College Cork, wrote that Hovind's ideas are not rational or scientific because they are not testable. Hovind has repeatedly declined offers for written debates where his claims would be scrutinized by scientists, including his decline of a debate offer from Dave Thomas.


title: Kent Hovind

text: During a debate with Farrell Till, Hovind said that Donald Johanson had uncovered the leg bones of Lucy at a different site over a mile away from the reported site, in a deeper stratum, quipping, "I would like to know how fast the train was going that hit that chimpanzee." This was clearly contrary to the published statements by Johanson. After Hovind had been informed in 1993 that his statement was false, he agreed to stop using the claim. When he repeated the claim in 1995, he once more agreed he was in error.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1990, Hovind made a $10,000 offer to anyone who could meet a set of requirements he said would prove evolution, and he later raised the amount to $250,000. In 2007, Creation Science Evangelism removed the offer from its website.


title: Kent Hovind

text: The premises of Hovind's offer have been rejected both by scientists and fellow creationists as fundamentally flawed. Hovind's conditions would require a claimant not only to prove the theory of evolution, but also abiogenesis, astrophysics and cosmology, and additionally prove that no gods could possibly exist. The judges would be hand-picked without assurances that they would be unbiased or qualified to assess the merit of claims, and it is possible that no panel was convened when a claim was submitted. Some forms of evidence would be excluded prior to judging.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Answers in Genesis dismissed the challenge as a gimmick. A 2005 challenge on "Boing Boing" offered $250,000 to anyone who could prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (the deity of a parody religion constructed to make a point about giving time to alternative views on evolution) was not the father of Jesus.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1999, a Bradenton, Florida pastor asked the school board to consider adding Creationism to the curriculum. The school board chairman's actions raised issues when, in his capacity as a citizen, he helped fund a series of seminars by Hovind, but he was within ethical guidelines. More controversy was raised when a school employee was sent to videotape the lectures, although without intention for rebroadcast. Ultimately, there was no curriculum change.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind was criticized for his involvement with Arkansas state Representative Jim Holt's Anti-Evolution Bill in 2001 (House Bill 2548). This bill "would have required that when public schools refer to evolution that it be identified as an unproven theory." Opponents of the bill worried that it would subject Arkansas to the same type of derision that occurred when the state's balanced-treatment law was struck down in "McLean v. Arkansas". Holt called upon Hovind as an expert who "testified for Holt before the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, alleging much of the information pertaining to evolution in our science textbooks is false."


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 2007, David Vitter added a $100,000 earmark in a U.S. Senate appropriations bill, directed towards the Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote better science education". Their website included a document, A Battle Plan—Practical Steps to Combat Evolution' by Kent Hovind". After a reporter's inquiries, the document, which called evolution "not a harmless theory but a dangerous religious belief" and blamed it for atrocities by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot, was removed from their website. The earmark was withdrawn from the bill.


title: Kent Hovind

text: The most widely distributed antievolution work, "Big Daddy?", was first published in 1972 and revised several times; it is one of the controversial Chick tracts, comic strips intended to convert people to fundamentalist Christianity. Material from Hovind was incorporated into the 2000 revision.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind has made controversial remarks regarding conspiracies, science, creation, equal rights, religion, and government. His presentations on creationism and evolution are a mix of Christian Fundamentalism and conspiracy theories. His creationist presentations have asserted that creationism is not taught in public schools due to a New World Order conspiracy, established by Satan and involving Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, the British Royal Family, the State of Israel, the American Civil Liberties Union (which he calls "the American Communist Lawyers Union"), U.S. government officials, business leaders, and social activists. In May 1999, he claimed "the implementation of the NWO's world-domination plan was May 5, 2000."


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind has promoted several conspiracy theories about the U.S. government. He has claimed that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. Regarding UFOs, Hovind recommends books by conspiracy theorists who believe "some UFO's are U.S. Government experiments with electrogravitic propulsion as opposed to jet propulsion, while others are Satanic apparitions." The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) criticized Hovind for referring followers to books by Irwin Schiff, a tax protester who has been convicted of tax evasion multiple times. The SPLC has criticized Hovind for "point[ing] his followers to "Citizens Rule Book", popular among antigovernment 'Patriots', and to "Media Bypass", an antigovernment magazine with strong antisemitic leanings", and for selling of books such as Des Griffin's "Fourth Reich of the Rich" and Peter Kershaw's "In Caesar's Grip", and recommending "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a well-known antisemitic hoax.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind claims that the cyanide-releasing compound laetrile is a "cancer cure" which the U.S. government is conspiring to suppress and that diseases including HIV, Gulf war syndrome, Crohn's colitis, and rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer's were engineered by "the money masters and governments of the world" for the purpose of global economic domination. He has denounced democracy as "evil and contrary to God's law", and called global warming a communist conspiracy.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In his lectures, he claimed that the United States government was implanting pet-tracking microchips into people allowing them to be tracked by satellite, even though the transponder range made that impossible. On his website, Hovind associated the UPC bar code with the Mark of the Beast, and wrote that there were reports of people paying for groceries by having their hands scanned in 1999.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On September 16, 2007, the Rational Response Squad complained that Creation Science Evangelism was filing spurious DMCA requests that had caused RRS YouTube videos to be taken down and the RRS YouTube account to be banned. In response to the copyright claims, the RRS threatened a lawsuit.


title: Kent Hovind

text: At the time of the complaints, the CSE's website indicated the videos were not copyrighted, and the CSE encouraged copying and distributing them. Five days later, the CSE copyright page was changed to say that copied material must be left unedited. According to a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, CSE's claim was "clearly bogus", and as of September 25, 2007, the Rational Response Squad account had been reinstated, and some of the videos had been put back online.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On August 15, 2002, Hovind was arrested for assault, battery, and burglary in an incident with a CSE secretary. The charges were dropped in December.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On September 13, 2002, Hovind was charged with failure to observe county zoning regulations for Dinosaur Adventure Land, a misdemeanor. In April 2006, the Dinosaur Adventure Land buildings were closed by county officials, and the Florida circuit court found the owners in contempt, ordering fines of $500 for each day the buildings were used. Hovind argued he did not need a permit due to the nature of the building, but after a 5-year court battle over the $50 building permit, on June 5, 2006, Hovind pleaded "nolo contendere" as charged to three counts: constructing a building without a permit, refusing to sign a citation, and violating the county building code. Hovind paid fines totaling $675.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind was originally reported to the Internal Revenue Service by Pensacola Christian College senior vice President Rebekah Horton in the mid-1990s, after she learned of Hovind's anti-tax stand. Hovind's organization had neither business licenses nor tax-exempt status, nor was it considered a church by people who worked there. The ministry's organizational structure was described by the United States Tax Court as appearing to be "based on various questionable trust documents purchased from Glen Stoll, a known promoter of tax avoidance schemes", leading the Court to conclude that Hovind used these trust documents as well as other fraudulent means to conceal the ownership and control of his activities and properties.


title: Kent Hovind

text: According to the IRS, Hovind earned $50,000 a year through speaking engagements, and in 2002 alone, CSE sold more than $1.8 million in merchandise. On average, Hovind made bank deposits in excess of $1 million each year, and eventually that grew to about $2 million a year. About half that income went to employees who were salaried or were paid hourly wages. However, Hovind derived "substantial revenue" from these activities that appeared to be "income to [him] personally".


title: Kent Hovind

text: On March 1, 1996, Hovind filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy petition to avoid paying federal income taxes, claiming he was not a citizen of the United States and that he did not earn income. He claimed that as a minister, everything he owned belonged to God and he was not subject to paying taxes for doing God's work. On June 5, 1996, the Court dismissed Hovind's bankruptcy case, finding he had lied about his possessions and income. The court upheld the IRS's determination that his claim "was filed in bad faith for the sole purpose of avoiding payment of federal income taxes" and called Hovind's arguments "patently absurd". It also said that "the IRS has no record of the debtor ever having filed a federal income tax return."


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 1998, the IRS requested account information about Hovind from an internet provider after Hovind made claims on an internet broadcast about his own tax law noncompliance, going back to the 1970s. When the provider initially balked, the courts granted a subpoena on the basis that the IRS could demonstrate that Hovind had received income but had filed no income tax returns going back to 1991. In 2003, Hovind would tell "The New York Times", "I haven't filed a tax return in 30 years."


title: Kent Hovind

text: On May 13, 1998, Hovind and his wife filed a "Power of Attorney and Revocation of Signature" document in Escambia County which would nullify any of their promises, debts, or legal agreements made prior to April 15, 1998. The Hovinds claimed they had signed government documents "due to the use of various elements of fraud and misrepresentations, duress, coercion, under perjury, mistake, 'bankruptcy'," and argued that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme". The document referred to the United States Government as "the 'bankrupt' corporate government", renounced the Hovinds' United States citizenship and Social Security numbers to become "a natural citizen of 'America' and a natural sojourner", and referred to their home state of Florida as "the State of Florida Body-Politic Corporation." Judges and the IRS did not appear to honor this as a legally relevant document in future decisions. In 2002, Hovind was again delinquent in paying his taxes, and unsuccessfully sued the IRS for harassment.


title: Kent Hovind

text: At various times, the government alleged that Hovind had not filed personal U.S. federal income tax returns for the years 1989 through 1997. In the spring of 2004, the IRS conducted an audit and criminal investigation regarding Hovind's unfiled personal Federal income tax for 1995 through 1997. IRS agent Scott Schneider said, "Since 1997, Hovind has engaged in financial transactions indicating sources of income and has made deposits to bank accounts well in excess of $1 million per year during some of these years, which would require the filing of federal income taxes." On June 3, 2004, the IRS executed a search warrant on Hovind's home and businesses to confiscate financial records and attempt to deliver notices of Federal tax liens of $504,957.24, which Hovind refused to accept. Agents confiscated $42,000 in cash found in various places in the residence. Six guns were present, including an SKS semiautomatic rifle. That day, Hovind withdrew $70,000 from the CSE bank account, half in cash.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On July 7, 2006, the United States Tax Court found that Hovind was deficient in paying his federal income taxes in 1995–1997, totaling $520,099. The Tax Court ruled that the IRS had a valid lien on Hovind's property and said that Hovind's defense was based on "bizarre arguments, some of which constitute tax protester arguments involving excise taxes and the alleged '100% voluntary' nature of the income tax." With penalties, he owed $3.3 million for tax years 1998–2006 by 2013. Jo Hovind was ordered to pay $1.6 million.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On July 11, 2006, Hovind was indicted on 58 counts in the District Court in Northern Florida in Pensacola. The first 12 counts were charges for willful failure to collect, account for, and pay over federal income taxes and FICA taxes in connection with the CSE operation, totaling $473,818 for the 12 fiscal quarters of 2001–2003. The next 45 counts were charges for knowingly structuring transactions by making multiple cash withdrawals totaling $430,500 in amounts just under the $10,000 which requires reporting (a technique known as "structuring"), for which his wife was also charged. The last count was a charge of corruptly endeavoring to obstruct and impede the administration of the internal revenue laws by falsely listing the IRS as his only creditor when filing for bankruptcy, filing a false and frivolous lawsuit against the IRS in which he demanded damages for criminal trespass, making threats of harm to those investigating him and to those who might consider cooperating with the investigation, filing a false complaint against IRS agents investigating him, filing a false criminal complaint against IRS special agents (criminal investigators), and destroying records. Because of reports of weapons on the Hovind property, the indictment was originally sealed for fear of danger to the arresting agents.


title: Kent Hovind

text: At arraignment, Hovind claimed incomprehension to the charges, telling the court: "I still don't understand what I'm being charged for and who is charging me." The presiding magistrate judge asked Hovind if he wrote and spoke English, to which Hovind responded, "To some degree." The judge replied that the government adequately explained the allegations and the defendant understands the charges "whether you want to admit it or not." Hovind stated that he did not recognize the government's right to try him on tax-fraud charges. At first he attempted to enter a plea of "subornation of false muster," but then entered a not guilty plea "under duress" when the judge offered to enter a plea for him. When asked about his home, Hovind called it a "church parish", and denied any residence except the "church of Jesus Christ", worldwide. Hovind's passport and guns were seized. Hovind protested, arguing that he needed his passport to continue his evangelism work, and that "thousands and thousands" were waiting to hear him preach in South Africa the following month. The court refused to reconsider, accepting the argument that "like-minded people" might secret Hovind away if he left the country.


title: Kent Hovind

text: The trial began on October 21, 2006. Hovind hoped to convince a jury that his amusement park admission and merchandise sales, over $5 million from 1999 through March 2004, belonged to God and could not be taxed. Evidence produced at the trial revealed that Jo Hovind had requested financial assistance from Baptist Healthcare by claiming that the Hovinds had no income. IRS agents told the court how Hovind had attempted "bullying tactics" and had sued the government three times to pressure them to stop investigating. The lawsuits had been thrown out. The prosecution countered attempts to describe workers as missionaries, ministers, and volunteers, introducing memos in which they had been called employees. Workers testified that they had to punch time cards, had vacation and sick days, and did not receive W-2 tax forms. After the IRS executed the search warrant, employees were required to sign non-disclosure agreements to remain employed. A lawyer who did work for a non-profit Christian organization testified that Hovind claimed to have "beat" the tax system and that he favored cash transactions because they were untraceable and, consequently, untaxable.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind's lawyer engaged in a lengthy cross-examination of the lead IRS investigator, and the case ended on November 1 with the defense calling no witnesses. After closing arguments were presented on November 2, the jury deliberated three hours before finding the Hovinds guilty on all counts, 58 for Hovind and 45 for his wife. The "Pensacola News Journal" said, "The saddest thing: had they cooperated with the agents, they probably wouldn't be worrying about prison sentences now."


title: Kent Hovind

text: After the convictions and pending sentencing, Hovind was incarcerated in the Escambia County Jail as a "danger to the community" and a flight risk. His wife would remain free until after the appeal.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On January 19, 2007, Hovind was sentenced to ten years in prison with three years' probation and ordered to pay the federal government restitution of over $600,000. During the sentencing phase, a tearful Hovind, hoping to avoid prison, told the court, "If it's just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach." However, Hovind's court room behavior was in stark contrast to phone calls he made while in jail and played by the prosecution. The tapes, posted online by the "Pensacola News Journal", included one conversation with Hovind and son Eric, who were planning to hide a motor vehicle title and property deeds to prevent the government from collecting the property to pay for owed debt. At sentencing, he denied being a "tax protester", but the prosecution, an IRS spokesman, and the "Pensacola News Journal" used the term to describe him.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On June 29, 2007, Jo Hovind was sentenced to one year of imprisonment, three years of supervision upon release and fined $8,000. In court, Jo Hovind offered explanations for the 45 checks just under $10,000 and for checks cashed before and after the reporting deadline, telling the judge "I really did not have a leadership role in CSE" and finished "I would never knowingly do anything illegal." The judge said that while Hovind was the principal authority at CSE, Jo managed the payroll; she had cashed roughly 200 checks totaling $1.5 million over a four-year period, relying on cash to avoid IRS scrutiny. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied both appeals on December 30, 2008, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied "certiorari" on November 2, 2009.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind appealed the amount of his 2006 U.S. Tax Court ruling on personal income taxes to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, but on July 2, 2007, a three-judge panel denied the appeal, finding that Hovind had failed to raise the issue at the appropriate time.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In November 2010, Hovind filed a motion in U.S. District Court Northern District of Florida claiming the prosecution and defense erred at various stages of the case; it was denied the following May. It was one of at least six motions to dismiss he filed that year on various procedural or constitutional grounds.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In July 2015, Hovind was released to home confinement for roughly one month to finish his prison sentence for his 2006 conviction. Almost a year after his release, Hovind said he would continue to fight his conviction and the property seizure.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In October 2019, Hovind filed a motion to vacate in the trial court without obtaining the required certification from the appellate court; the motion was dismissed, summarily.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 2007, the government placed liens on ten of the Hovinds' properties for money owed following a June 27, 2007, judgment, which included an order that the properties be forfeited under for costs of $5,800, a fine of $2000, and restitution of $604,874.87. On December 30, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied the Hovinds' appeal and affirmed the convictions and sentences entered by the district court. Following the appeal, Jo Hovind served her prison term from January 20, 2009, to December 3, 2009.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In 2008, Eric Hovind and Glen Stoll, an individual who has been associated with the Embassy of Heaven organization and who has falsely claimed to be a lawyer, attempted to prevent the forfeitures of Hovind's ten properties, including Dinosaur Adventure Land, in connection with the federal tax problems. (In early 2019, Stoll himself was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Portland, Oregon on unrelated charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, making a false statement on a loan application, and tax evasion.) The government sought the property, deeded to Stoll and Eric prior to Hovind's convictions, since cash had been withdrawn from the bank accounts and could not be recovered. In a court filing, however, Eric Hovind said that he owned one of the properties and that he "took active control over the lot by personally building a home on it with $70,000 he borrowed from CSE." The court accepted Eric's ownership of that property, but allowed the government to seize the other nine properties. The court ruling denying the Hovinds' appeal cleared the way for forfeiture proceedings on Hovind-owned properties, including those on which Dinosaur Adventure Land sat, to continue to satisfy the debt.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In March 2012, the federal government sued Creation Science Evangelism to remove liens placed on Hovind's former property that was seized after his conviction, and in June, the court ruled in favor of the government.


title: Kent Hovind

text: In May 2013, facing the sale of lots that were once part of Dinosaur Adventure land, Hovind acted. Using legal advice from another inmate, he filed a civil right suit against corrections personnel (a "Bivens action") alleging that they intentionally delayed court documents which hindered another appeal. Based on the assumption that it would trigger a chain of rulings that would ultimately result in the original sentence being overturned, he then filed several "lis pendens" on the properties. A federal judge rejected Hovind's claims and dismissed the filings ("void "ab initio""), and asked for a "show of cause" from Hovind to explain why he should not be found in contempt of court for the false filings. His release date was approaching when he would face new charges related to the "lis pendens" filings.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On October 21, 2014, Hovind was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pensacola, Florida, on two counts of mail fraud, one count of conspiracy with Paul John Hansen to commit mail fraud, and one count of criminal contempt for interfering with the sale of Pensacola properties Hovind was forced to forfeit as a result of the 2006 case. Hovind and Hansen pleaded not guilty and were tried together.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On March 2, 2015, the trial began in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida. On the first day of testimony, the prosecution discussed Hovind and Hansen's "dozens of filings", including several "lis pendens", used to resist a court-ordered forfeiture due in part to legal advice Hovind took from his "cellmate in a New Hampshire prison camp". The prosecution case included numerous emails, recorded phone calls, and court filings related to the forfeited properties. The prosecution presented audio of Hovind characterizing a "lis pendens" by asking his daughter, "Have you ever taken a step into dog crap and it gets stuck on your feet and it's really hard to get off?" Hansen and Hovind took the stand in their own defense. According to journalist Kevin Robinson, during Hovind's testimony, he "refused to give short answers" and said that he believed his actions were lawful. On March 12, 2015, Hovind was found guilty on one count of criminal contempt, Hansen on two counts of criminal contempt, and the jury was hung on the remaining charges.


title: Kent Hovind

text: A trial on the counts on which the jury could not reach a verdict had been ordered to begin on May 18, 2015. However, on May 16, 2015, the prosecution filed its "Government's Motion to Dismiss Counts One, Two and Four of the Superseding Indictment Without Prejudice," citing "issues regarding the technical sufficiency of the Superseding Indictment, including the adequacy of notice." Later, on May 16, the Court cancelled the jury selection and trial that had been scheduled to begin on Monday, May 18, in order, in the Court's words, to permit the defendants to respond to the government's motion.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On Monday, May 18, 2015, the U.S. District Court made two decisions. First, the Court granted the prosecutor's request for a "without prejudice" dismissal of the three remaining charges against Hovind, allowing the prosecutor to go back to a Federal grand jury and seek a new indictment if desired. Second, the Court rendered a judgment of acquittal on the criminal contempt charge on which Hovind had been found guilty by the jury. On that point, the Court concluded that in the specific order that Hovind had been found guilty of violating, there was no actual language that prohibited Hovind from doing anything.


title: Kent Hovind

text: On August 21, 2015, Paul John Hansen was sentenced to 18 months in prison and three years' probation for the two counts of contempt.


title: Kent Hovind

text: Hovind was arrested in Alabama on July 30, 2021, for allegedly throwing his estranged wife, Cindi Lincoln, to the ground in October 2020. Additionally, she petitioned for a protective order in Conecuh County, Alabama, saying that she had to go to the emergency room after being "bodyslammed". She has also stated that she had been threatened by one of Hovind's associates. At a bench trial in the Connecuh County Courthouse on September 20, 2021, he was found guilty of domestic violence. He was sentenced to one year in jail which would be suspended following 30 days in the county jail to start by October 18, fined $500, and ordered to pay restitution for medical expenses. A request for a retrial was denied, and an appeal triggered a jury trial in the Alabama Circuit Courts.


title: Bon

text: Bon, also spelled Bön () and also known as Yungdrung Bon (, "eternal Bon"), is a Tibetan religious tradition with many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism and also many unique features. Bon initially developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries,


title: Bon

text: but may retain elements from earlier religious traditions (which also used the term Bon). Bon remains a significant minority religion in Tibet (especially in Eastern Tibet) and in the surrounding Himalayan regions.


title: Bon

text: The relationship between Bon and Tibetan Buddhism has been a subject of debate. According to the modern scholar Geoffrey Samuel, while Bon is "essentially a variant of Tibetan Buddhism" with many resemblances to Nyingma, it also preserves some genuinely ancient pre-Buddhist elements. David Snellgrove likewise sees Bon as a form of Buddhism, albeit a heterodox kind. Similarly, John Powers writes that "historical evidence indicates that Bön only developed as a self-conscious religious system under the influence of Buddhism".


title: Bon

text: Followers of Bon, known as "Bonpos" (Wylie: "bon po"), believe that the religion originated in a land called Zhangzhung, located in the Himalayas, perhaps also the area around Mount Kailash in Tibet. Bonpos identify the Buddha Shenrab Miwo (Wylie: "gshen rab mi bo") as Bon's founder, although no available sources establish this figure's historicity. Bonpos hold that Bon was brought first to Zhang Zhung, a kingdom to the west of the Tibetan Plateau, and then to Tibet.


title: Bon

text: Western scholars have posited several origins for Bon, and have used the term "Bon" in many ways. A distinction is sometimes made between an ancient Bon (), dating back to the pre-dynastic era before 618 CE; a classical Bon tradition (also called "Yungdrung Bon" - ) which emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries;


title: Bon

text: and "New Bon" or Bon Sar (), a late syncretic movement dating back to the 14th century and active in eastern Tibet.


title: Bon

text: Tibetan Buddhist scholarship tends to cast Bon in a negative, adversarial light, with derogatory stories about Bon appearing in a number of Buddhist histories. The Rimé movement within Tibetan religion encouraged more ecumenical attitudes between Bonpos and Buddhists. Western scholars began to take Bon seriously as a religious tradition worthy of study in the 1960s, in large part inspired by the work of English scholar David Snellgrove (1920-2016) Following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, Bonpo scholars began to arrive in Europe and North America, encouraging interest in Bon in the West. Today, a proportion of Tibetans - both in Tibet and in the Tibetan diaspora - practise Bon, and there are Bonpo centers in cities around the world.


title: Bon

text: Early Western studies of Bon relied heavily on Buddhist sources, and used the word to refer to the pre-Buddhist religion over which it was thought Buddhism triumphed. Helmut Hoffmann's 1950 study of Bon characterized this religion as "animism" and "shamanism"; these characterizations have been controversial. Hoffmann contrasted this animistic-shamanistic folk religion with the organized priesthood of Bonpos which developed later, Shaivism, Buddhist tantras. Hoffman also argued that Gnosticism from the West influenced the systematized Bon religion.


title: Bon

text: Hoffmann's study was foundational for Western understandings of Bon, but was challenged by a later generation of scholars influenced by David Snellgrove, who collaborated with Bonpo masters and translated Bonpo canonical texts. These scholars tended to view Bon as a heterodox form of Buddhism, transmitted separately from the two transmissions from India to Tibet that formed the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. With the translation of Bonpo histories into Western languages as well as increased engagement between Bonpos and Western scholars, a shift took place in Bon studies towards engaging more thoroughly Bonpos' own histories and self-identification, recognizing Bon as an independent religious tradition worthy of academic study.


title: Bon

text: The term "Bon" has been used to refer to several different phenomena. Drawing from Buddhist sources, early Western commentators on Bon used the term for the pre-Buddhist religious practices of Tibet. These include folk religious practices, cults surrounding royalty, and divination practices. However, scholars have debated whether the term "Bon" should be used for all of these practices, and what their relationship is to the modern Bon religion. In an influential article, R. A. Stein used the term "the nameless religion" to refer to folk religious practices, distinguishing them from Bon.


title: Bon

text: Per Kvaerne uses Bon solely to refer to a tradition he dates from tenth and eleventh centuries CE, the tradition which developed into the modern Bon religion. Kvaerne identifies this tradition as "an unorthodox form of Buddhism," but other scholars such as Samten G. Karmay take seriously Bonpo narratives which define Bon as a separate tradition with an origin in the land of 'Olmo Lungring. The term Yungdrung Bon (Wylie: "g.yung drung bon") is sometimes used to describe this tradition. "Yungdrung" refers to the left-facing swastika, a symbol which occupies in Bon a similar place as the vajra (Wylie: "rdo rje") in Tibetan Buddhism, symbolizing indestructibility and eternity. Yungdrung Bon is a universal religion, although it is mainly limited to Tibetans, with some non-Tibetan converts.


title: Bon

text: There is also a kind of local village priests which are common throughout the Himalayas that are called "bon", "lhabon" or "aya" (and bombo in Nepal). These are not part of the Bon religion proper, but are lay ritual specialists, often on a part time basis. Samuel states that it is unclear if these "bon" priests go back to the ancient period or if the term developed after Yungdrung Bon.


title: Bon

text: Furthermore, the Dongba (东巴) practices of the Nakhi people and the Hangui (韩规) religion of the Pumi people are both believed to have originated from Bon.


title: Bon

text: As noted by Dmitry Ermakov, "the word Bön is used to denote many diverse religious and cultural traditions." Bon sources acknowledge this and Bon authors like Shardza Rinpoche (1859–1935), Pelden Tsultrim (1902–1973) and Lopön Tenzin Namdak use a classification of three types of "Bon". Modern scholars also sometimes rely on this classification, which is as follows:


title: Bon

text: Dmitry Ermakov also adds an extra category which he terms "mixed Bon" and which he defines as:a blend of these three types of Bön in different proportions, often with the addition of elements from other religions such as Hinduism, Taoism, Himalayan Tribal religions, Native Siberian belief systems etc. Mixed Bön would include Secular Bön or the civil religion of the Himalayan borderlands studied by Charles Ramble in his "The Navel of Demoness," as well as Buryatian Bѳ Murgel, from the shores of Lake Baikal, the religion of the Nakhi in Yunnan, and so on.


title: Bon

text: From the traditional point of view of the Bon religion, Bon was the original religion of Tibet and Zhangzhung which was taught there by various Buddhas, including Tonpa Shenrab (whose name means “Supreme Holy Man”).


title: Bon

text: Tonpa Shenrab is believed to have received the teaching from the transcendent deity Shenlha Okar in a pure realm before being reborn in the human realm with the purpose of teaching and liberating beings from the cycle of rebirth. He attained Buddhahood several hundred years before Sakyamuni Buddha, in a country west of Tibet, called Olmo Lungring or Tazig (Tasi), which is difficult to identify and acts as a semi-mythical holy land in Bon (like Shambala). Various dates are given for his birth date, one of which corresponds to 1917 BCE. Some Bon texts also state that Sakyamuni was a later manifestation of Tonpa Shenrab.


title: Bon

text: Tonpa Sherab is said to have been born to the Tazig royal family and to have eventually become the king of the realm. He is said to be the main Buddha of our era. He had numerous wives and children, constructed numerous temples and performed many rituals in order to spread Bon. Like Padmasambhava, he is also held to have defeated and subjugated many demons through his magical feats, and like King Gesar, he is also believed to have led numerous campaigns against evil forces.


title: Bon

text: Tonpa Shenrab is held to have visited the kingdom of Zhangzhung (an area in western Tibet around Mount Kailash), where he found a people whose practice involved spiritual appeasement with animal sacrifice. He taught them to substitute offerings with symbolic animal forms made from barley flour. He only taught according to the student's capability and thus he taught these people the lower vehicles to prepare them for the study of sutra, tantra and Dzogchen in later lives. It is only later in life that he became a celibate ascetic and it is during this time that he defeated his main enemy, the prince of the demons.


title: Bon

text: After Tonpa Shenrab's paranirvana, his works were preserved in the language of Zhangzhung by ancient Bon siddhas. Most of these teachings were said to have been lost in Tibet after the persecutions against Bon, such as during the time of Trisong Detsen. Bon histories hold that some of Tonpa Shenrab's teachings were hidden away as termas and later re-discovered by Bon treasure revealers (tertons), the most important of which is Shenchen Luga (c. early 11th century).


title: Bon

text: In the fourteenth century, Loden Nyingpo revealed a terma known as "The Brilliance" (), which contained the story of Tonpa Shenrab. He was not the first Bonpo tertön, but his terma became one of the definitive scriptures of Bon.


title: Bon

text: Bon histories also discuss the lives of other important religious figures, such as the Zhangzhung Dzogchen master Tapihritsa.


title: Bon

text: Bon myth also includes other elements which are more obviously pre-Buddhist. According to Samuel, Bonpo texts include a creation narrative (in the "Sipe D zop ’ug") in which a creator deity, Trigyel Kugpa, also known as Shenlha Okar, creates two eggs, a dark egg and a light egg.


title: Bon

text: According to Bon scriptures, in the beginning, these two forces, light and dark, created two persons. The black man, called Nyelwa Nakpo (“Black Suffering”), created the stars and all the demons, and is responsible for evil things like droughts. The white man, Öserden (“Radiant One”), is good and virtuous. He created the sun and moon, and taught humans religion. These two forces remain in the world in an ongoing struggle of good and evil which is also fought in the heart of every person.


title: Bon

text: Powers also writes that according to Bon scriptures, in the beginning, there was only emptiness, which is not a blank void but a pure potentiality. This produced five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and space) which came together into a vast "cosmic egg", from which a primordial being, Belchen Kékhö, was born.


title: Bon

text: Little is known about the pre-Buddhist religion of ancient Tibet and scholars of Bon disagree on its nature. Bon may have referred to a kind of ritual, a type of priest, or a local religion. In ancient Tibet, there seem to have been a class of priests known as "kushen" ("sku gshen", “Priests of the Body”, i.e., the king's body). This religion was eventually marginalized with the coming of Buddhism and Buddhists wrote critiques and polemics of this religion, some of which survive in manuscripts found in Dunhuang (which refer to these practices as "Bon").


title: Bon

text: Likewise, Powers notes that early historical evidence indicates that the term 'bön' originally referred to a type of priest who conducted various ceremonies, including priests of the Yarlung kings. Their rituals included propitiating local spirits and guiding the dead through ceremonies to ensure a good afterlife. Their rituals may have involved animal sacrifice, making offerings with food and drink, and burying the dead with precious jewels. The most elaborate rituals involved the Tibetan kings which had special tombs made for them.


title: Bon

text: Robert Thurman describes at least one type of Bon as a "court religion" instituted "around 100 BCE" by King Pudegungyal, ninth king of the Yarlung dynasty, "perhaps derived from Iranian models", mixed with existing native traditions. It was focused on "the support of the divine legitimacy of an organized state", still relatively new in Tibet. Prominent features were "great sacrificial rituals", especially around royal coronations and burials, and "oracular rites derived from the folk religion, especially magical possessions and healings that required the priests to exhibit shamanic powers". The king was symbolized by the mountain and the priest/shaman by the sky. The religion was "somewhere between the previous "primitive animism", and the much changed later types of Bon.


title: Bon

text: According to David Snellgrove, the claim that Bon came from the West into Tibet is possible, since Buddhism had already been introduced to other areas surrounding Tibet (in Central Asia) before its introduction into Tibet. As Powers writes, "since much of Central Asia at one time was Buddhist, it is very plausible that a form of Buddhism could have been transmitted to western Tibet prior to the arrival of Buddhist missionaries in the central provinces. Once established, it might then have absorbed elements of the local folk religion, eventually developing into a distinctive system incorporating features of Central Asian Buddhism and Tibetan folk religion."


title: Bon

text: According to Powers, ancient Bon was closely associated with the royal cult of the kings during the early Tibetan Empire period and they performed "ceremonies to ensure the well-being of the country, guard against evil, protect the king, and enlist the help of spirits in Tibet's military ventures." As Buddhism began to become a more important part of Tibet's religious life, ancient Bon and Buddhism came into conflict and there is evidence of anti-Bon polemics. Some sources claim that a debate between Bonpos and Buddhists was held, and that a Tibetan king ruled Buddhism the winner, banishing Bon priests to border regions. However, Gorvine also mentions that in some cases, Bon priests and Buddhist monks would perform rituals together, and thus there was also some collaboration during the initial period of Buddhist dissemination in Tibet.


title: Bon

text: Bon sources place the blame of the decline of Bon on two persecutions by two Tibetan kings, Drigum Tsenpo and the Buddhist King Tri Songdetsen (r. 740-797). They also state that at this time, Bon terma texts were concealed all over Tibet. Bon sources generally see the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet and the subsequent period of Buddhist religious dominance as a catastrophe for the true doctrine of Bon. They see this as having been caused by demonic forces. However, other more conciliatory sources also state that Tonpa Shenrab and Sakyamuni were cousins and that their teachings are essentially the same.


title: Bon

text: The most influential historical figure of this period is the Bon lama Drenpa Namkha. Buddhist sources mention this figure as well and there is little doubt he was a real historical figure. He is known for having ordained himself into Bon during a time when the religion was in decline and for having hidden away many Bon termas. Bon tradition holds that he was the father of another important figure, Tsewang Rigzin and some sources also claim he was the father of Padmasambhava, which is unlikely as the great majority of sources say Padmasambhava was born in Swat, Pakistan. A great cult developed around Drenpa Namkha and there is a vast literature about this figure.


title: Bon

text: Yungdrung Bon (Eternal Bon) is a living tradition that developed in Tibet in the 10th and 11th centuries during the later dissemination of Buddhism (sometimes called the renaissance period) and contains many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism. According to Samuel, the origins of modern Yungdrung Bon have much in common with that of the Nyingma school. Samuel traces both traditions to groups of "hereditary ritual practitioners" in Tibet which drew on Buddhist Tantra and "elements of earlier court and village-level ritual" during the 10th and 11th centuries.


title: Bon

text: These figures were threatened by the arrival of new Buddhist traditions from India which had greater prestige, new ritual repertoires and the full backing of Indian Buddhist scholarship. Both Nyingmapas and Bonpos used the concept of the terma to develop and expand their traditions in competition with the Sarma schools and also to defend their school as being grounded in an authentic ancient tradition. Thus, Bonpo tertons (treasure finders) like Shenchen Luga and Meuton Gongdzad Ritrod Chenpo revealed important Bon termas. An interesting figure of this era is the Dzogchen master and translator Vairotsana, who according to some sources also translated Bon texts into Tibetan and also hid some Bon termas before leaving Tibet.


title: Bon

text: While Yungdrung Bon and Nyingma originated in similar circles of pre-Sarma era ritual tantric practitioners, they adopted different approaches to legitimate their traditions. Nyingma looked back to the Tibetan Empire period, and Indian Buddhist figures like Padmasambhava. Bonpos meanwhile looked further back, to Tibet's pre-Buddhist heritage, to another Buddha who was said to have lived before Sakyamuni, as well as to other masters from the kingdom of Zhangzhung. The main Bonpo figures of the Tibetan renaissance period were tertons (treasure revealers) who are said to have discovered Bon texts that had been hidden away during the era of persecution. These figures include Shenchen Luga (gShen chen Klu dga'), Khutsa Dawo (Khu tsha zla 'od, b. 1024), Gyermi Nyi O (Gyer mi nyi 'od), and Zhoton Ngodrup (bZhod ston d Ngos grub, c. 12th century). Most of these figures were also laymen. It was also during this era of Bonpo renewal that the Bon Kanjur and Tenjur were compiled.


title: Bon

text: Just like all forms of Tibetan Buddhism, Yungdrung Bon eventually developed a monastic tradition, with celibate monks living in various monasteries. Bon monks are called "trangsong", a term that translates the Sanskrit rishi (seer, or sage). A key figure in the establishment of Bon monasticism was Nyamme Sherab Gyaltsen (mNyam med Shes rab rgyal mtshan, c. 1356-1415). According to Jean Luc Achard, "his insistence on Madhyamaka, logic, gradual path (lamrim) and philosophical studies has modeled the now traditional approach of practice in most Bon po monasteries." His tradition emphasizes the importance of combining the study of sutra, tantra and Dzogchen. The most important Bon monastery is Menri monastery, which was built in 1405 in Tsang. Bon monks, like their Buddhist counterparts, study scripture, train in philosophical debate and perform rituals. However, Bon also has a strong tradition of lay yogis.


title: Bon

text: "New Bon" ("bonsar", or sarma Bon) is a more recent development in the Bon tradition, which is closely related to both Eternal Bon and the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. It is centered on the figures of Drenpa Namkha, Tsewang Rigdzin and Padmasambhava, which in this school are considered to have transmitted and written commentaries on the works of Tonpa Shenrab in around the 8th century.


title: Bon

text: According to Jean Luc Achard, the New Bon movement begins in Eastern Tibet with the works of Tulku Loden Nyingpo (1360-1385), a terton who discovered the "Zibji" ("gzi brjid"), a famous Tonpa Shenrab biography. His reincarnation, Techen Mishik Dorje is also known for his terma revelations.


title: Bon

text: The movement continued to develop, with new Bon terma texts being revealed well into the 18th century by influential tertons like Tulku Sangye Lingpa (b. 1705) and the first Kundrol Drakpa (b. 1700). New Bon figures do not consider their revelations to be truly "new", in the sense that they do not see their revelations as being ultimately different than Yungdrung Bon. However, some followers of more orthodox Yundrung Bon lineages, like the Manri tradition, saw these termas as being influenced by Buddhism. Later New Bon figures like Shardza Rinpoche (1859-1934) responded to these critiques (see his "Treasury of Good Sayings", "legs bshad mdzod"). The work of these New Bon figures led to the flourishing of New Bon in Eastern Tibet.


title: Bon

text: Some Tibetan tertons like Dorje Lingpa were known to have revealed New Bon termas as well as Nyingma termas.


title: Bon

text: Lobsang Yeshe (1663–1737), recognized as the 5th Panchen Lama by the 5th Dalai Lama (1617–1682), was a member of the Dru family, an important Bon family. Samten Karmay sees this choice as a gesture of reconciliation with Bon by the Fifth Dalai Lama (who had previously converted some Bon monasteries to Gelug ones by force). Under the Fifth Dalai Lama, Bon was also officially recognized as a Tibetan religion. Bon suffered extensively during the Dzungar invasion of Tibet in 1717, when many Nyingmapas and Bonpos were executed.


title: Bon

text: In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bon tradition (both New Bon and Eternal Bon lineages) flourished in Eastern Tibet, led by charismatic Bonpo lamas like bDe ch en gling pa, d Bal gter sTag s lag can (bsTan 'dzin dbang rgyal), gSang sngags gling pa, and Shardza Rinpoche.


title: Bon

text: Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (1859-1933) was a particularly important Bon master of this era, whose collected writings comprise up to eighteen volumes (or sometimes twenty). According to William M. Gorvine, this figure is "the Bon religion's most renowned and influential luminary of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." He was associated with the orthodox Eternal Bon Manri monastery tradition as well as with New Bon figures like the 5th and 6th Kun grol incarnations, gSang sngags gling pa (b. 1864) and bDe chen gling pa (1833-1893) as well as with dBal bon sTag lag ca n, bsTan ' d zin dbang rgyal (b. 1832). These figures maintained the orthodox Manri tradition of Eternal Bon, while also holding New Bon terma lineages.


title: Bon

text: Shardza Rinpoche is also known to have had connections with the non-sectarian Buddhist lamas of the Rime movement and to have taught both Buddhists and Bonpos.


title: Bon

text: Shardza Rinpoche had many disciples, including his nephew Lodro Gyatso (1915-1954) who led the lineage and Shardza's hermitage and college, after Shardza's passing. His disciple Kagya Khyungtrul Jigmey Namkha trained many practitioners to be learned in not only the Bon religion, but in all Tibetan sciences. More than three hundred Bon monasteries had been established in Tibet before Chinese occupation. Of these, Menri Monastery and Shurishing Yungdrung Dungdrakling Monastery were the two principal monastic universities for the study and practice of Bon.


title: Bon

text: In 2019, scholars estimate that there were 400,000 Bon followers in the Tibetan plateau. When Tibet was invaded by the People's Republic of China, there were approximately 300 Bon monasteries in Tibet and the rest of western China. Bon suffered the same fate as Tibetan Buddhism did during the Chinese Cultural revolution, though their monasteries were allowed to rebuild after 1980.


title: Bon

text: The present spiritual head of the Bon is Menri Trizin Rinpoché, successor of Lungtok Tenpai Nyima (1929–2017), the thirty-fourth Abbot of Menri Monastery (destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, but now rebuilt), who now presides over Pal Shen-ten Menri Ling in Dolanji in Himachal Pradesh, India. The 33rd lineage holder of Menri Monastery, Menri Trizin Lungtog Tenpei Nyima and Lopön Tenzin Namdak are important current lineage holders of Bon.


title: Bon

text: A number of Bon establishments also exist in Nepal; Triten Norbutse Bonpo Monastery is one on the western outskirts of Kathmandu. Bon's leading monastery in India is the refounded Menri Monastery in Dolanji, Himachal Pradesh.


title: Bon

text: Bonpos remained a stigmatized and marginalized group until 1979, when they sent representatives to Dharamshala and the 14th Dalai Lama, who advised the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration to accept Bon members. Before this recognition, during the previous twenty years, the Bon community had received none of the financial support which was channeled through the Dalai Lama's office and were often neglected and treated dismissively in the Tibetan refugee community.


title: Bon

text: Since 1979, Bon has had official recognition of its status as a religious group, with the same rights as the Buddhist schools. This was re-stated in 1987 by the Dalai Lama, who also forbade discrimination against the Bonpos, stating that it was both undemocratic and self-defeating. He even donned Bon ritual paraphernalia, emphasizing "the religious equality of the Bon faith". The Dalai Lama now sees Bon as the fifth Tibetan religion and has given Bonpos representation on the Council of Religious Affairs at Dharamsala.


title: Bon

text: However, Tibetans still differentiate between Bon and Buddhism, referring to members of the Nyingma, Shakya, Kagyu and Gelug schools as "nangpa", meaning "insiders", but to practitioners of Bon as "Bonpo", or even "chipa" ("outsiders").


title: Bon

text: According to Samuel, the teachings of Bon closely resemble those of Tibetan Buddhism, especially those of the Nyingma school (both schools share a focus on Dzogchen). Bon monasticism has also developed a philosophical and debate tradition which is modeled on the tradition of the Gelug school. Like Buddhism, Bon teachings see the world as a place of suffering and seek spiritual liberation. They teach karma and rebirth as well as the six realms of existence found in Buddhism.


title: Bon

text: Bon lamas and monks fill similar roles as those of Tibetan Buddhist lamas and the deities and rituals of Bon often resemble Buddhist ones, even if their names and iconography differ in other respects. For example, the Bon deity Phurba is almost the same deity as Vajrakilaya, while Chamma closely resembles Tara.


title: Bon

text: Per Kværne writes that, at first glance, Bon "appear to be nearly indistinguishable from Buddhism with respect to its doctrines, monastic life, rituals, and meditational practices." However, both religions agree that they are distinct, and a central distinction is that Bon's source of religious authority is not the Indian Buddhist tradition, but what it considers to be the eternal religion which it received from Zhangzhung (in Western Tibet) and ultimately derives from land called Tazik where Tonpa Shenrab lived, ruled as king and taught Bon. Bon also includes many rituals and concerns that are not as common in Tibetan Buddhism. Many of these are worldly and pragmatic, such as divination rituals, funerary rituals that are meant to guide a deceased person's consciousness to higher realms and appeasing local deities through ransom rituals.


title: Bon

text: In the Bon worldview, the term "Bon" means “truth,” “reality,” and “the true doctrine.” The Bon religion, which is revealed by enlightened beings, provides ways of dealing with the mundane world as well as a path to spiritual liberation. Bon doctrine is generally classified in various ways, including the "nine ways" and the four portals and the fifth, the treasury.


title: Bon

text: According to Bon, all of reality is pervaded by a transcendent principle, which has a male aspect called Kuntuzangpo (All-Good) and a female aspect called Kuntuzangmo. This principle is an empty dynamic potentiality. It is also identified with what is called the “bön body” (bon sku), which is the true nature of all phenomena and is similar to the Buddhist idea of the Dharmakaya, as well as with the “bön nature” (bon nyid), which is similar to "Buddha nature". This ultimate principle is the source of all reality and to achieve spiritual liberation, one must have insight into this ultimate nature.


title: Bon

text: According to John Myrdhin Reynolds, Bonpo Dzogchen is said to reveal one's Primordial State (ye gzhi) or Natural State (gnas-lugs) which is described in terms of intrinsic primordial purity (ka-dag) and spontaneous perfection in manifestation (lhun-grub).


title: Bon

text: The Bon Dzogchen understanding of reality is explained by Powers as follows:In Bön great perfection texts, the world is said to be an emanation of luminous mind. All the phenomena of experience are its illusory projections, which have their being in mind itself. Mind in turn is part of the primordial basis of all reality, called “bön nature.” This exists in the form of multicolored light and pervades all of reality, which is merely its manifestation. Thus Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen contends that everything exists in dependence upon mind, which is an expression of the bön nature...mind is a primordially pure entity that is co-extensive with bön nature, an all-pervasive reality that is only perceived by those who have eliminated adventitious mental afflictions and actualized the luminous potentiality of mind. Those who attain awakening transform themselves into variegated light in the form of the rainbow body, after which their physical forms dissolve, leaving nothing behind. Both cyclic existence and nirvana are mind, the only difference being that those who have attained nirvana have eliminated illusory afflictions, and so their cognitive streams are manifested as clear light, while beings caught up in cyclic existence fail to recognize the luminous nature of mind and so are plagued by its illusory creations.


title: Bon

text: Samuel notes that Bon tends to be more accepting and explicit in their embrace of the practical side of life (and the importance of life rituals and worldly activities) which falls under the "Bon of cause" division of "the Nine Ways of Bon" ("bon theg pa rim dgu"). This schema includes all the teachings of Bon and divides them into nine main classes, which are as follows:


title: Bon

text: Traditionally, the Nine Ways are taught in three versions: in the Central, Northern and Southern treasures. The Central treasure is closest to Nyingma Nine Yānas teaching and the Northern treasure is lost. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche elaborated the Southern treasure with shamanism.


title: Bon

text: This classification, called The Four Portals and the Fifth, the Treasury ("sgo bzhi mdzod lnga"), is a different and independent system of classification. The main sets of teachings here are divided up as follows:


title: Bon

text: Bon deities share some similarities to Buddhist Mahayana deities and some are also called "Buddhas" (sanggye), but they also have unique names, iconography and mantras. As in Tibetan Buddhism, Bon deities can be "peaceful" or "wrathful".


title: Bon

text: The most important of the peaceful deities are the "Four Transcendent Lords, Deshek Tsozhi (bDer gshegs gtso bzhi)." Each of these four beings has many different forms and manifestations. These are:


title: Bon

text: Bon Yidams (meditation or tutelary deities) are those deities which are often used in meditative tantric practice and are the mainly fierce or wrathful forms. These class of deities resemble Buddhist yidams like Chakrasamvara and Hevajra. It includes figures like Magyu Sangchog Tartug ('Supreme Secret of Mother Tantras, Attaining the Limit'), Trowo Tsochog Khagying ('Wrathful One, Supreme Lord Towering in the Sky'), Welse Ngampa ('Fierce Piercing Deity'), and Meri ('Mountain of Fire'). The Bonpos also have a tantric tradition of a deity called Purpa, which is very similar to the Nyingma deity Vajrakilaya.


title: Bon

text: Like the Buddhists, the Bon pantheon also includes various protector deities, siddhas (perfected ones), lamas (teachers) and dakinis. Some key figures are Drenpa Namkha (a major 8th century Bon lama whose name is also mentioned in Buddhist sources), the sage Takla Mebar (a disciple of Tonpa Shenrab), Sangwa Dupa (a sage from Tazik), Zangsa Ringtsun (Auspicious Lady of Long Life).


title: Bon

text: The Bon cosmos contains numerous other deities, including Shangpo and Chucham (a goddess of water) who produced nine gods and goddesses. There is also the 360 Kékhö, who live on the mount Tisé (Kailash) and the 360 Werma deities. These are associated with the 360 days of the year.


title: Bon

text: Another set of deities are the White Old Man, a sky god, and his consort. They are known by a few different names, such as the Gyalpo Pehar called “King Pehar” (). Pehar is featured as a protecting deity of Zhangzhung, the center of the Bon religion. Reportedly, Pehar is related to celestial heavens and the sky in general. In early Buddhist times, Pehar transmogrified into a shamanic bird to adapt to the bird motifs of shamanism. Pehar's consort is a female deity known by one of her names as Düza Minkar ().


title: Bon

text: Bonpos cultivate household gods in addition to other deities and the layout of their homes may include various seats for protector deities.


title: Bon

text: Chinese influence is also seen is some of the deities worshiped in Bon. For example, Confucius is worshipped in Bon as a holy king and master of magic, divination and astrology. He is also seen as being a reincarnation of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, the legendary founder of Bon.


title: Bon

text: In the Balti version of Bon in Baltistan, deities such as "lha" (gods), "klu" (serpents or dragons) and "lhamo" (goddesses) are worshipped, and many legends about these deities still exist among the local population.


title: Bon

text: Bon texts can be divided into translations of teachings (the words of Buddha Shenrab, found in the Bon Kanjur) and translations of treatises (philosophical and commentarial texts, the Bon Tenjur). The Bon Kanjur comprises four main categories: the Sutras ("mdo"), the Perfection of Wisdom Teachings ("'bum"), the Tantras ("rgyud") and Higher Knowledge ("mdzod," 'Treasure-house'), which deals with the supreme forms of meditation. The Tenjur material is classified into three main categories according to Kvaerne: "'External', including commentaries on canonical texts dealing with monastic discipline, morality; metaphysics and the biographies of Tonpa Shenrap; 'Internal', comprising the commentaries on the Tantras including rituals focusing on the tantric deities and the cult of dakinis, goddesses whose task it is to protect the Doctrine, and worldly rituals of magic and divination; and finally 'Secret', a section that deals with meditational practices."


title: Bon

text: Besides these, the Bon canon includes material on rituals, arts and crafts, logic, medicine, poetry and narrative. According to Powers, Bon literature includes numerous ritual and liturgical treatises, which share some similarities to Tibetan Buddhist ritual. According to Per Kvaerne, "while no precise date for the formation of the Bonpo Kanjur can be ascertained at present...it does not seem to contain texts which have come to light later than 1386. A reasonable surmise would be that the Bonpo Kanjur was assembled by 1450."


title: Bon

text: According to Samuel, Bon texts are similar to Buddhist texts and thus suggest "a considerable amount of borrowing between the two traditions in the tenth and eleventh centuries. While it has generally been assumed that this borrowing proceeds from Buddhist to Bonpo, and this seems to have been the case for the Phurba practice, some of it may well have been in the opposite direction." Powers similarly notes that "many Bön scriptures are nearly identical to texts in the Buddhist canon, but often have different titles and Bön technical terms" and "only a few Bön texts that seem to predate Buddhism." While Western scholars initially assumed that this similarity with Buddhist texts was mere plagiarism, the work of Snellgrove and others have reassessed this view and now most scholars of Bon hold that in many cases, Buddhist texts borrow and reproduce Bon texts. Per Kværne writes that "this does not mean that Bon was not at some stage powerfully influenced by Buddhism; but once the two religions, Bon and Buddhism, were established as rival traditions in Tibet, their relationship was a complicated one of mutual influence.


title: Bon

text: Regarding the current status of the Bon canon, Powers writes that,The Bön canon today consists of about three hundred volumes, which were carved onto wood blocks around the middle of the nineteenth century and stored in Trochu in eastern Tibet. Copies of the canon were printed until the 1950s, but the blocks were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, although it appears that most of the texts were brought to India or hidden in Tibet.


title: Bon

text: The largest part of the Bon canon is made up of numerous termas (treasure texts), which were believed to have been hidden away during the period of persecution and to have begun to be discovered during the 10th century. Bonpos hold that their termas were hidden by masters like Drenpa Namkha during the period of decline and persecution under King Trisong Deutsen, and then were rediscovered by later Bon tertons (treasure discoverers).


title: Bon

text: Three Bon scriptures—"mdo <nowiki>'</nowiki>dus", "gzer mig", and "gzi brjid"—relate the mythos of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche. The Bonpos regard the first two as "gter ma" rediscovered around the tenth and eleventh centuries and the last as "nyan brgyud" (oral transmission) dictated by Loden Nyingpo, who lived in the fourteenth century.


title: Bon

text: "A Cavern of Treasures" () is a Bon terma uncovered by Shenchen Luga () in the early 11th century which is an important source for the study of the Zhang-Zhung language.


title: Bon

text: The main Bon great perfection teachings are found in terma texts called "The Three Cycles of Revelation". The primary Bon Dzogchen text is "The Golden Tortoise", which was revealed by Ngödrup Drakpa (c. 11th century). According to Samten Karmay, these teachings are similar to those of the Semde class in Nyingma. According to Jean Luc Achard, the main Dzogchen cycle studied and practiced in contemporary Bon is "The Oral Transmission of the Great Perfection in Zhangzhung" ("rDzogs pa chen po zhang zhung snyan rgyud")"," a cycle which includes teachings on the Dzogchen practices of trekcho and thogal (though it uses different terms to refer to these practices) and is attributed to the Zhangzhung sage Tapihritsa.


title: Ali Campbell

text: Alistair Ian Campbell (born 15 February 1959) is an English singer and songwriter who was lead singer of the British reggae band UB40. As part of UB40, Campbell sold over 70 million records worldwide and toured the globe for 30 years. In 2008, Campbell left UB40 due to a dispute with band management and embarked on a solo career. In 2012, Campbell was announced as one of the three judges on the panel of the TV show "New Zealand's Got Talent". In August 2014, Campbell announced he had reunited with former UB40 bandmates Astro and Mickey to record a new album, "Silhouette", released on 6 October 2014.


title: Ali Campbell

text: Alistair Ian Campbell was born in Birmingham, England. He is the brother of former bandmate Robin Campbell and former UB40 frontman Duncan Campbell, and is a son of the late Scottish folk singer Ian Campbell.


title: Ali Campbell

text: In October 2007, Campbell released a solo album titled "Running Free". It entered the UK charts at number 9 and went gold. This was the first top ten entry for Campbell for a new studio album since UB40s "Labour of Love 3" album, which was released 10 years prior to "Running Free".


title: Ali Campbell

text: On 24 January 2008, it was reported that Campbell was to quit the group after almost 30 years. Campbell, who was a founding member of UB40, songwriter and lead vocalist, finally quit the band in 2008. Their last gigs together were in February 2008 in Australia, New Zealand and Uganda.


title: Ali Campbell

text: Campbell then issued a statement on his website and through his solicitors stating that for many years he had been unhappy with the business practices and business managers of UB40 and launched an investigation into the financial handling of the business. This was the reason for his departure.


title: Ali Campbell

text: A few months later, Michael Virtue the keyboard player also left UB40, citing the same reasons as Campbell, and joined Campbell's legal investigation. Virtue subsequently joined Campbell's new band, the Dep band.


title: Ali Campbell

text: In the UK, his solo albums "Big Love" and "Running Free" both reached the UK Top 10, while "Flying High" and "Great British Songs" reached the Top 20. Campbell scored a number 1 hit in 1994 as featured artist, along with brother Robin, on Pato Banton's cover of The Equals' "Baby Come Back".


title: Ali Campbell

text: On 18 October 2010 Ali released his fourth solo album "Great British Songs"—a collection of British pop and rock hits from the 1960s and 1970s. The album reached 15 on the UK Albums Chart where it remained for three weeks. It also gave Campbell his third top 15 charting album in as many years. Critic David Jefferies of AllMusic said of the album, "Longtime fans will appreciate that Campbell's voice is as strong as ever, but it deserves a better showcase than this mixed bag". Campbell's label Jacaranda Music was number one on the UK independent chart in October 2010 and "Great British Songs" also entered the iTunes reggae album chart at number one.


title: Ali Campbell

text: In 2012, Campbell was announced as one of the three judges on the judging panel of the TV show, "New Zealand's Got Talent", along with Jason Kerrison and Rachel Hunter. In 2013, Campbell was replaced for the third series by American choreographer Cris Judd.