buddhism is NOT THE RELIGION it originally was. buddha preached around the time when hinduism was becoming very ritualistic and very expensive to perform pujas, yagnas etc. buddha eveolved buddhism as a religion sort of for the common man. while all the mantras of hinduism were being chanted in sanskrit which only the elite understood, buddha preached in prakrit, the language of the people. anyway, buddhism as it originally was had NO GOD. the basic philosophy was to live your life by a virtous code of conduct so that in the end your sould would be free from the cycle of death and rebirth-- a state called nirvana, which is another word for the corresponding state in hinduism called moksha.
anyway, around 200 to 300 years after buddha died a great sage called sankaracharya was born. he helped revive hinduism and freed a great deal of it from all the ritualistic crap. so many people turned to hinduism again. but what happened to buddhism was people began to worship buddha as a god. after some time the hindus declared that buddha was an avatar of lord vishnu--- the greatest insult to buddhism, i feel. buddha isn't worshipped by hindus as an avatar of vishnu, but it had been declared, and buddha had lost his fundamental identity and became a god---the very thing he campaigned against. anyway, tibetan buddhism is rubbish. it's a fusion of buddhism and the old pagan religion of tibet.
an indian buddhist monk called rinpoche travelled to tibet and translated the works of buddhism into tibetan. gradually buddhism was adoptec by tibetans BUT it was fused with the old pagan religion. i'm sorry to say, buddhism as buddha envisioned it is no longer practised anywhere on the earth.