>>24721732
>Jeet things good
Here's how Vajrayana started:
1) University of Nalanda transforming Buddhist Mahayana doctrines into a quasi-Shaivite tantric mode to make itself more marketable to rulers upon whose donations and support said university depended; and the Jeet rulers at that time preferred bellicose and violent tantra that promised godhood and universal powers rather than Buddhist enlightenment because they wanted to LARP as the universal ruler in the centre of a mandala that has all the powers to subjugate his enemies.
2) Marginal Shaivite groups - think proto-Aghoris - that lived nearby Nalanda but outside its jurisdiction, probably in cremation grounds, and gradually influenced curious students of Buddhism. Imagine a PCP nigger ghetto outside Harvard that somehow attracted high class students. That's the Nalanda and the tantric milieu situation.
If you know your Hindu tantra, you'll see parallels in the Buddhist tantra, and you'll see that the confusing issues in Vajrayana stem from adoption of an alien ideology and grafting it on Buddhist philosophy.
Source: Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History
And other anon is correct. Other Buddhist schools treated Tantra with contempt since it broke fundamental Buddhist beliefs and vows. Outside of Tibet, Jeeted Buddhism, especially of the antinomian variety, didn't take deep roots. The Tantric Buddhism of China and Japan is closer to Mahayana than to the skull and bones and sperm and pussy blood that infiltrated Tibet.
The Tibetan conundrum is the result of adopting this Jeeted Buddhism and turning into a political and ideological entity after the downfall of the first empire (which may have fallen due to the first grafting of Jeeted Buddhism via Padmasambhava). Power became synonymous with teachings: the more exclusive, hidden tantric teachings you could bring from India, the more power and prestige you had. With time, a single owner formed a whole community around himself that gradually acquired economic and politic power within certain valleys and beyond. These communities circled around the initiated and deified ruler commanding from the centre his whole mandala like kingdom. Dalai Lama is the most public form of the above pattern, rooted in Jeet texts and Rajput politics from about 700 - 1000 AD.
Source: Tibetan Renaissance
My favourite part is when rich Tibetans traveled to the Nepal Valley and local Buddhist pandits created tantric scriptures with deep pedigree out of thin air to get money. And now you have, after about 700 to 800 years, a tradition that thinks it's based on the hidden teachings of Buddha but which has its roots in a swindle of some opportunist scamming tantrika Jeet. And now it's a serious tradition with even some 4chan autists, bespectacled, stiletto bearded, ponytailed, in a manila suit with a red tie, occult minded and pedantic, berating others for not questioning and not doing the thing the traditional way. That's religion and occultism for you.