[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[Mitchell Ginsberg]

Hello Steve and all, 
Thank you for your prompt and informative reply. I will try to track down the references you give, since I do not have those texts here. So, how do you understand Tucci's use of the term? Are there several attitudes taken in this past century, then, about the admissibility of the term 'lamaism'? 
Also, I checked (not finding anything about Mr. Schmidt) in  in a German-based Dictionary I have (it was translated into French in its entirety as Dictionnaire de la sagesse orientale, and then the Buddhist and Zen parts were translated into The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen), the entry from Lamaism there just gives is as a name of Tibetan Buddhism, with no indication of its questionable status. So there too there is no trace of the problem with the term. 


Hmmmm. Well, I see in any case that some people at least do not like the term for at least almost 100 years now!!!! Did older Tibetan monks ever comment on this one way or the other, or use the term themselves? I hear that HHDL.14 somewhere in the past 2 or so decades spoke of being uncomfortable with the term. And you say that Lama Anagarika Govinda as he is more commonly known also spoke of Lamaism... I only have his Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism and The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhism Philosophy, and do not find 'lamaism' in the index of either of those books. 
Thanks again! 
Mitchell 
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This is replying to the posting by Steve Feite answering my earlier questions: 


Donald Lopez, Jr.'s 1998 work _Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan  
Buddhism and the West_ in it's first chapter, "The Name", details the  
history of the neologism Lamaism, Lamaist, etc. in considerable  
detail, showing how it is basically a derogatory term. I would  
suspect lamasery (which I seem to recall from reading the German  
Ernst Lothar Hoffman, aka, Anagarika Govinda's books) would be  
similarly considered bad form. It is also associated with Theosophy  
IIRC.

As early as 1835 German Buddhist scholar Issac Jacob Schmidt, who  
studied the Buddhism of the Kalmyks in Russia, wrote "On Lamaism and  
the Meaninglessness of the Term". So the dislike of the term is not new.

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"Altogether, therefore, "Lamaism" is an undesirable designation for  
the Buddhism of Tibet, and is rightly dropping out of use."  -L. A.  
Waddell, 1915.

"Lamaism was a combination of the esoteric Buddhism of India, China  
and Japan with native cults of the Himalayas.  National Gallery of  
Art brochure, 1991.

-Steve Feite