ABSTRACT
Of the two great schools of Buddhism, the Mahayana is prevalent in Tibet and all the Buddhist countries except those in south-east Asia, where the Theravada holds sway. The Tantras are embodied in a final section of the Mahayana canon which the Tibetans received from India and translated with great care and exactness into their own language. Tantric Buddhism is so much an integral part of the Mahayana that its special techniques cannot be understood apart from the Mahayana background. Mahayana Buddhists have no one name for divine reality. Buddhists intent upon the path to Liberation are more concerned with the 'hows' of practice than with the 'whys' of existence. Buddhism's inability to offer a solution to the problem of origins is far from unique. Buddhists distrust such analogies, as they are liable to error and misconstruction.
