Within the Bön tradition, nature is regarded as a sacred, living reality rather than a neutral backdrop. Mountains, rivers, lakes, trees, rocks, and even weather phenomena are understood to be inhabited by conscious spirits and deities, each with its own agency and requirements. This animistic vision treats all natural phenomena as imbued with spiritual essence, so that human beings live within a dense web of visible and invisible presences. Maintaining a right relationship with these forces is seen as both a spiritual duty and a practical necessity, since misfortune and illness can arise when the balance with such beings is disturbed.

The landscape itself functions as a kind of sacred geography. Particular mountains, lakes, springs, and valleys are revered as dwelling places of powerful deities and local guardians, and thus become sites of pilgrimage, meditation, and ritual. Practices such as circumambulation and offerings at these locations are not merely symbolic; they are ways of entering into direct relationship with the powers that inhabit the land. In this way, the natural world is experienced as a field of spiritual power, structured by specific places where the divine presence is especially concentrated.

Bön teachings also describe a world animated by various classes of elemental spirits associated with earth, water, sky, and high places. Beings such as lu linked with water, sadak connected with the earth, and other local spirits are understood to dwell in particular features of the environment. Ritual specialists act as intermediaries between human communities and these nature spirits, performing ceremonies, healing rites, and divination to restore or maintain harmony. Offerings, smoke rituals, prayer flags, and other observances are directed toward appeasing offended beings and reaffirming a reciprocal relationship with them.

Ethically, this worldview gives rise to a strong sense of responsibility toward the land and its inhabitants. Actions that damage or pollute the environment are seen not only as materially harmful but also as violations of a sacred order. Taboos and ritual prescriptions surrounding certain trees, springs, or sites function as both spiritual safeguards and traditional forms of environmental care. Even in more philosophically developed currents of Bön, with their refined contemplative and meditative systems, this reverence for nature and its spirits remains deeply woven into religious life, shaping how practitioners understand health, misfortune, and the proper conduct of human beings within the larger cosmos.