I searched Dhammawheel for, "What is the buddhadhamma?" and "buddhadhamma" but it yielded nothing clarifying. It's a term that gets used a lot around here but without much clarification on what, exaclty, the users mean by it. I Googled "buddhamma" and was directed to Wikepedia's "Buddhism" page, which implies "buddhadhamma" is a synonym for "Buddhism." I'm familiar with the term sāsana and that some use it to mean "the teachings" or "the religion" but it, much like the term "buddhadhamma" seems to imply some kind of dispensationalism: that there is some temporal (historical?) cut-off point where the Buddhamma ended and the non-Buddhadhamma "age" began.
I find this confusing because we find Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for instance, saying things like this in his Preface to the Wings to Awakening:
So if the Pali tradition is part of the "buddhadhamma," this implies that the "buddhadhamma" is also a living tradition and not a dispensation with a temporal beginning and end. And if we insist that the "buddhadhamma" is a dispensation, then are we not relying way to heavily on not only the informal fallacy of an argument to tradition but also the informal fallacy of an argument to authority? But if, as the Thanissaro passage I cited asserts, modern Buddhists are part of that tradition and have some authority of their own, then we cannot with honesty or integrity say that the tradition is final or ultimately authoritative, can we?Because the Pali tradition is still a living one, the doctrinal and historical contexts do not account for the full range of meanings that practicing Buddhists continue to find in the texts. To provide this living dimension, I have drawn on the teachings of modern practice traditions where these seem to harmonize with the message of the Canon and add an illuminating perspective (my emphases).
Thank you for your time and consideration.