[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[Mitchell Ginsberg]

Hello all, 
Departing from the trip that stories took from the Indian sub-continent westwards ho, I was recently in Beijing and was taken to what was called a lamasery. This I found a special neologism (in my idiolect, in any case) based on monestary + lama. It was in fact a functioning Tibetan Buddhist sangha. My son's friend who took us there says that she goes there regularly to pray and to offer incense burnings. (I'm not sure of what she would say in Chinese.) 
Well, that aside (somewhat), I was relatedly talking to someone here recently and I mentioned talk of Lamaism (the book One Year in Tibet). I was chastised for using an outmoded and derogatory term. When I went to a book by Guiseppe Tucci (not the cookbook giving information on the passage of noodle dishes from China to Italy, but the Buddhologist), The Religions of Tibet, he referred to Lamaism with no interest in insulting anyone. 
Is contemporary Tibetan Buddhist scholarship avoiding this term completely? Is it seen as necessarily derogatory (even if we don't read back into time to say that Tucci was therefore attacking Tibetan Buddhism)? 
I cannot remember what Heinz Bechert had to say about that term. Sorry I didn't have a chance to ask him about that when I had direct contact with him decades ago..... 

And, if I read Richard's comments about the Dutch being tricked into allowing him to take the space of a canal with him (I wonder if it helped hold up the airplane), I conclude he is back in SW USA. If so, welcome back! 


Mitchell Ginsberg ==========
Homepage (updated 18 November 09): http://jinavamsa.com 
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