Buddhism in Mongolia is essentially
Tibetan Buddhism of the
Gelugpa school. Traditionally,
Mongols worshiped
heaven (the "clear blue sky") and their ancestors, and they followed ancient northern Asian practices of
shamanism, in which human intermediaries went into
trance and spoke to and for some of the numberless infinities of spirits responsible for human luck or misfortune. Although the emperors of the
Yuan Dynasty in the 14th and 15th century had already converted to Tibetan buddhism, the Mongols returned to their old shamanist ways after the collapse of their empire. In 1578
Altan Khan, a Mongol military leader with ambitions to unite the Mongols and to emulate the career of
Chinggis, invited the head of the rising
Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism to a summit. They formed an alliance that gave Altan Khan legitimacy and religious sanction for his imperial pretensions and that provided the Buddhist school with protection and patronage. Altan khan gave the Tibetan leader the title of
Dalai Lama (Ocean
Lama), which his successors still hold. Altan Khan died soon after, but in the next century the Yellow Sect spread throughout Mongolia, aided in part by the efforts of contending Mongol
aristocrats to win religious sanction and mass support for their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to unite all Mongols in a single state.
Monasteries (momg.
datsan) were built across Mongolia, often sited at the juncture of trade and migration routes or at summer pastures, where large numbers of herders would congregate for shamanistic rituals and sacrifices. Buddhist monks carried out a protracted struggle with the indigenous shamans and succeeded, to some extent, in taking over their functions and fees as healers and diviners, and in pushing the shamans to the fringes of Mongolian culture and religion.
Tibetan Buddhism, which combines elements of the Mahayana and the Tantric schools of Buddhism with traditional Tibetan rituals of curing and exorcism, shares the common Buddhist goal of individual release from suffering and the cycles of rebirth. The religion holds that salvation, in the sense of release from the cycle of rebirth, can be achieved through the intercession of compassionate Buddhas (enlightened ones) who have delayed their own entry to the state of selfless bliss (nirvana) to save others. Such Buddhas, also termed Bodhisattvas, are in practice treated more as deities than as enlightened humans and occupy the center of a richly polytheistic universe of subordinate deities, opposing demons, converted and reformed demons, wandering ghosts, and saintly humans that reflects the folk religions of the regions into which Buddhism expanded. Tantrism contributed esoteric techniques of meditation and a repertoire of sacred icons, phrases, and gestures that easily lent themselves to pragmatic (rather than transcendental) and magical interpretation. The religion posits progressive stages of enlightenment and comprehension of the reality underlying the illusions that hamper the understanding and perceptions of those not trained in meditation or Buddhist doctrine, with sacred symbols interpreted in increasingly abstract terms. Thus, a ritual that appears to a common yak herder as a straightforward exorcism of disease demons will be interpreted by a senior monk as a representation of conflicting tendencies in the mind of a meditating ascetic.
In Tibet Buddhism thus became an amalgam, combining colorful popular ceremonies and curing rituals for the masses with the study of esoteric doctrine for the monastic elite. The Yellow Sect, in contrast to competing sects, stressed monastic discipline and the use of logic and formal debates as aids to enlightenment. The basic Buddhist tenet of reincarnation was combined with the Tantric idea that buddhahood could be achieved within a person's lifetime to produce a category of leaders who were considered to have achieved buddhahood and to be the reincarnations of previous leaders. These leaders, referred to as incarnate or living buddhas, held secular power and supervised a body of ordinary monks, or lamas (from a Tibetan title bla-ma, meaning "the revered one)". The monks were supported by the laity, who thereby gained merit and who received from the monks instructions in the rudiments of the faith and monastic services in healing, divination, and funerals.
The indigenous religion of Mongolia prior to Buddhism was shamanism, which focused specifically on rituals and nature deities.[1] There are still elements of modern Mongolian Buddhism that display the early amalgam between Buddhism and local shamanistic practices, such as the Mongolian Buddhist dance, the tsam. In addition to this dimension, Tibetan Buddhist monasticism made an important impact on the early development of Mongolian Buddhism.[2] The Buddhist monkhood always have played significant political roles in Central and Southeast Asia, and the Buddhist sangha in Mongolia was no exception. Church and state supported each other, and the doctrine of reincarnation made it possible for the reincarnations of living Buddhas to be discovered conveniently in the families of powerful Mongol nobles, until this practice was outlawed by the Qianlong Emperor.
