The gradual assimilation of Bön into Tibetan Buddhism gave rise to a religious world that is neither purely Buddhist nor purely indigenous, but a distinctive synthesis that shaped Tibetan culture at every level. Indigenous deities of mountains, rivers, and local territories, once approached through Bön ritual specialists, were reinterpreted within a Buddhist framework as protectors of the Dharma and guardians of specific regions. This allowed Buddhism to root itself in the existing sacred landscape, so that the new religion did not feel foreign but rather emerged as a deepening of what was already present in the land and its spirits. The result was a Tibetan religious identity that differs markedly from Indian or Chinese forms of Buddhism, precisely because it carries this indigenous inheritance within it.

Ritual life in Tibet bears clear traces of this integration. Exorcisms, healing rites, weather control rituals, and divination practices show strong continuity with Bön forms, even when performed in explicitly Buddhist settings. Life‑cycle ceremonies, seasonal festivals, and agricultural rites often combine Buddhist liturgy with older Bön patterns, preserving shamanic healing and propitiatory practices alongside monastic prayer and meditation. Oracles, trance mediums, and astrologers operate within a shared symbolic universe where Bön and Buddhist elements are difficult to disentangle, and pilgrimage circuits to mountains and lakes sanctified in Bön are embraced as Buddhist sacred geography as well.

This synthesis also shaped doctrine, contemplative practice, and institutional life. Bön developed monastic codes, scholastic traditions, and advanced contemplative systems in dialogue with Buddhist models, while Buddhist schools, especially in the older traditions, exhibit parallel structures and practices that reflect mutual influence. Teachings on cosmology, consciousness, and meditative disciplines such as dream practices and subtle contemplative exercises circulate across the boundary between Bön and Buddhism, creating a shared philosophical and experiential vocabulary. Monasteries and religious hierarchies arose in ways that could accommodate both traditions, so that Tibetan identity came to encompass Buddhist and indigenous strands as parts of a single sacred heritage.

Language, art, and material culture reveal the same pattern of integration. Mythic histories of Tibet, its kings, and its sacred mountains, first articulated in Bön contexts, were reworked within Buddhist chronicles, giving Tibet a layered sacred history in which competing origin stories coexist and stimulate ongoing reflection. Visual depictions of fierce protector deities, local spirits, and sky‑going ritual specialists draw on Bön paradigms even when rendered in Buddhist iconographic styles, and architectural forms and symbols show similar overlap. In everyday village life, ritual healers, priests, and craftspeople continue to draw from both repertoires, so that the fusion of Bön and Buddhism is not merely a matter of doctrine but a living, embodied culture.