Tibet

   Himalayan country with a long historical influence in the region, especially stretching northward into Buryatia and Mongolia and south into Nepal and India. Buddhist authorities, lamas, sometimes acted against shamans but at other times creatively blended elements of earlier Buddhist and shamanic traditions into distinctive new forms. Buddhism and Bön-po are sometimes considered to be distinct religions, but a more useful understanding is that Bön-po is one of the local, shamanic forms Buddhism takes in Tibet and its diaspora. Buddhism’s best-known ecstatic form, Tantra, is sometimes considered to be a form of shamanism. Geoffrey Samuel’s discussions of Tibetan religion are important not only for descriptions but also for their elucidation of appropriate academic approaches to these and other religious complexes.