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Strongly influenced by the substrata of the native religion Bon (a form of Northeast Asian shamanism) and the later imports of Mahayana Buddhism and tantric ideas from India and Nepal, the Tibetan world view is uncompromising in its insistence on the “softness” of all phenomenal reality.
The question of “apparent” versus “real” in relation to phenomenal existence, which has long been a preoccupation of Western philosophy, was in Tibet long ago firmly decided in favour of the former; stong pa nyid (“emptiness,” “voidness”) is part of everyday speech of a Tibetan and the explanation he offers for the many riddles of life.
In the Tibetan view, all that exists is a mirage of the mind, imperfect images on a screen covering “absolute” reality, which can only be realized in liberation. Everything in the universe, then, has a meaning other than the apparent one, and the world is full of oracles and signs that need to be interpreted.
Imagination reigns supreme and all that can be imagined is as real as all that exists. There is no place for the supernatural in this world since one may arbitrarily choose to regard everything either as miraculous or as commonplace.
As David-Neel describes it, “None in Tibet deny that such events may take place, but no one regards them as miracles. Indeed, Tibetans do not recognize any supernatural agent. The so-called wonders, they think, are as natural as common daily events and depend on the clever handling of little known laws and forces.”
Since phenomenal existence is believed to be created by the mind, then phenomenal reality can also be controlled, the relationship between its elements varied, and new phenomena created, by special types of mental effort involving concentrated meditation, elaborate rituals and the transforming power of mantra.
—Sudhir Kakar
Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors
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