Is Tibetan Buddhism Mahayana or Theravada?

Tibetan Buddhism is one of the many different kinds of Mahayana Buddhism. Vajrayana is a special method that is included in Mahayana.

In fact, Theravada is a single tradition (although with regional variations), whereas Mahayana is commonly used as an umbrella term for a lot of different Buddhist traditions. Theravada is practiced in South and South-East Asia, mainly Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and parts of Vietnam, and is the only surviving of, or rather a development of one of the many so called Hinayana schools that appeared early in Buddhist history.

Almost as early, well before the beginning of the common era, there appeared another Buddhist tradition called the Mahayana, and from this tradition come all the other traditions of modern Asian Buddhism, including the many different kinds of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese (except those Vietnamese who are Theravadins) and Tibetan.

The main difference, as you maybe know, are that the Mahayanists accept a lot of sutras and other texts that the Theravadins don't accept (they accept only the original so called Three Baskets, now often called the Pali Canon). Building on those sutras, the Mahayana also has a lot of teachings that are not present in the Theravada, some of them philosophical explanations (that are for the Mahayanists not seen as contradicting the teachings of the Three Baskets, but just explaining them) and many of them just other kinds of practices.

The most special kind of Mahayana practices are the so called Tantras (the vajrayana practices), which are mainly practiced in the Tibetan traditions. That's the reason some people set aside Tibetan Buddhism under the name of Vajrayana instead of Mahayana, although it is definitely a kind of Mahayana, using the Mahayana sutras and scriptures, following the Mahayana philosophy and doing the Mahayana practices. However, strictly speaking we say that vajrayana exists inside the Tibetan traditions of Buddhism, but that it is not the same, because not all Tibetan Buddhism is vajrayana and not all Tibetan Buddhists practice tantra (vajrayana).

For more on Mahayana, Theravada, and their relation to Tibetan Buddhism, see my answers to these questions:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100730230839AA0crfH
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100720002056AAEWb3q
http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091111131033AAV8Op1

more about Tibetan Buddhism and tantra:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091202135130AA2zedJ

and more about the Mahayana scriptures:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080407211452AAABDG3

Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism was for the Human race It is only in the Human realm spiritual teachings can be fully understood
What you term Tibetan Buddhism isn't Buddhism at all As it has been correctly pointed out It is Lamaism Strongly influenced by Bonn and run largely by reptilians
Sooo maybe it would be correct to term it Luciferian as lucifer is the "god" of all reptilians Then we will all know where we stand

Tibetan Buddhism is neither Mahayana nor Theravada. It is Hiduism Tantra. Its main practices are couple practice.

Neither. It is Vajrayana.

Om Mani Peme Hung

From the Theravada view, asserting that Theravada is in effortless terms a small part of Mahayana is like asserting Judaism is a small part of Christianity or Christianity is a small part of Islam because of the fact of their undertaking-unfastened beginning. Mahayana is in keeping with texts and ideas that Theravadans evaluate apocryphal and against Buddhist innovations. i'm not asserting they are, i'm basically asserting that's what Theravadans say. If Mahayanans say Vajrayana Buddhism has replaced the unique texts, from the Theravada view it somewhat is somewhat like the pot calling the kettle black, or somebody attaching the e book of Mormon onto Mahayana texts and asserting Mahayana's incomplete because of the fact it has much less books than the latter. Any intellectually undemanding guy or woman admits that they weren't alive 2,500 years in the past and so has no way of understanding precisely what grow to be relatively reported or not.