Yes, it must be baffling (if not annoying) for Tantric Buddhists who often spend much time defining what is Tantrayana in their terms and what is not. Almost as confusing as hearing "Zen" in French used to mean something that is vaguely cool, calm, definitely non-religious, and fashionable (and certainly not right-wing, militaristic, and extremely socially conservative) was for older Japanese Zen Buddhists.Dhammanando wrote:The coiners of terms like “Tantric Theravāda” and “Theravāda Tantrism” are following the practice in academic Buddhist and Hindu studies of defining what counts as ‘tantric’ and what does not in a polythetic manner (i.e. based on Wittgenstein’s conception of “family resemblances”) rather than the monothetic way that would be employed by Tibetans.Caodemarte wrote:It is a confused term for a confused situation! It must be doubly so for those used to Tibetan Tantric Buddhism.
form wrote: Is it correct to say tibetan buddhism is a mixture of early Buddhism with braminism and Shamanism?
Tibetan Buddhism, a self-conscious successor to later Indian Buddhist thought and Indian Buddhist and (less self-consciously) non-Buddhist Tantra (not Brahmanism or Brahminism), certainly was influenced by local Tibetan religious traditions and practices, but the Buddhist influence on local religious traditions was massive and overwhelming. So it would probably be better to say that local Tibetan religious traditions called non-Buddhist are actually a mixture of Buddhism and local practices rather than over stress the reverse as early Western scholars often did.