To achieve lasting results, the Kalpa Group has now devised a five-year programme, which has three main objectives. The first is the sponsorship of scholarly research and the dissemination of its results. The second is the presentation of Bön to a general audience through publications, film and interactive DVDs. The third is the preservation of Bon’s living traditions through education and restoration projects.

The programme is being implemented in association with the Aris Trust Centre, which is the department for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at the University of Oxford. Its director is Dr. Charles Ramble, an anthropologist and Tibetologist who has specialised in the study of Bön communities. Links will also be maintained with other important academic centres in this field.

The recently established Oxford Bön Project, conceived by Dr. Ramble, will co-ordinate a five-year study of Bon, the living religion that Tibetans regard as the predecessor of Buddhism in their country. Core components of initial research funded by Kalpa include translations of key historical and ritual texts, completion of a catalogue of the Bön canon, and a monograph of Bön liturgical music. In February 2002, Digital Himalaya undertook to advise Dr. Ramble and other contributing members of the project on technical issues such as the digitisation of a video archive related to Bön ritual, designing and implementing a search and retrieval system for scanned still photos and assisting with the acquisition and installation of digital imaging hardware.

As the programme wishes to work with and for the Bön communities themselves, it has established a close relationship with Triten Norbutse, the Bön monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, and its abbot Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche, one of the greatest masters of the Bön tradition living today. It will be able to draw on his guidance and assistance, as well as that of Triten Norbutse’s great scholar, Khenpo Tenpa Yungdrung.

While much of the programme will involve scholarly and advanced technical research into the literature, history, culture and religious practices of Bön monasteries and lay communities, the aims it pursues are not just academic. It is also a quest to preserve and integrate valuable, centuries-old traditions.

INSTITUTIONS INVOLVED:
• The Aris Trust Centre, University of Oxford
• The Tibetan Academy of Social Science, Lhasa, Tibet.
• The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., USA.
• Triten Norbutse Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal.
• The Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge.