Within the Bon tradition, the Buddha and bodhisattvas are indeed acknowledged, yet they are woven into a religious tapestry that remains distinctly Bon. The central enlightened figure is not Buddha Śākyamuni but Tonpa Shenrab, who functions as Bon’s own primordial teacher and paradigmatic awakened being. Śākyamuni is recognized as an enlightened teacher, though typically associated with a different cultural sphere or age and not accorded the foundational status he holds in mainstream Buddhism. This already signals that Bon’s recognition of Buddhist figures does not amount to simple borrowing, but to a careful re-situating of them within its own sacred history and cosmology.

Bodhisattvas are also present in Bon, though often under Bon-specific names and attributes rather than the familiar Sanskrit or Tibetan Buddhist designations. Their roles and qualities—compassion, wisdom, protective activity—parallel those of Buddhist bodhisattvas, yet they are framed as Bon deities or enlightened beings whose origins are traced to Bon revelation and doctrine. This shared symbolic language of compassionate and wise figures points to a long process of interaction, in which Bon and Buddhism developed overlapping ritual forms, meditative practices, and iconographic patterns while maintaining distinct lineages and self-understandings.

Over centuries, this interaction produced a pantheon in Bon that mirrors many features of Tibetan Buddhism, yet remains grounded in its own narrative of origins and authority. Rituals, mandalas, and meditational deities may look strikingly similar across the two traditions, but Bon texts and teachings consistently root them in the activity of Tonpa Shenrab and in Bon cosmology rather than in Buddhist history. Thus, the Buddha and bodhisattvas are honored and integrated, yet they are subtly reinterpreted so that Bon’s spiritual universe retains its own center of gravity and its own sense of an independent, indigenous path.