ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ongoing definition and contestation of Buddhist ideologies. It focuses on ideological debates within particular contexts, and explores how Buddhists make use of tradition in their attempts to assert and subvert particular ideologies, highlights how the past functions as a resource for negotiating pressing concerns about present sociopolitical circumstances and imagined future trajectories. The effect of this ideology was in many respects to place the sect in opposition to the core institutions and social structures of traditional Buddhism, even though it was derived in large part from doctrines and practices that were widely shared among different Buddhist sects. Whether the tradition will be able to assimilate and respond effectively to aspects of modernity remains to be seen, but it will only be able to do so, David Germano suggests, if the Ter revelations begin to address more directly the contemporary realities facing Tibetan Buddhists.
