Terma · Tibetan: gter ma

Terma (Tibetan gter ma, “treasure”) are teachings that, in Lotsawa House’s description, were “reportedly hidden by Guru Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal”, either in the earth or in the minds of disciples, and then revealed at the right time by treasure-revealers, tertön (gter ston). A 2026 Tricycle overview by Zim Pickens, who holds a Berkeley PhD in South and Southeast Asian Studies, and the Tricycle senior editor Frederick M. Ranallo-Higgins distinguishes two main kinds: earth treasures, manuscripts and objects found in nature, and mind treasures, revealed directly to the tertön, who writes them down. It dates the emergence of treasure texts to the eleventh century, and says terma are most common in the Nyingma school, though also found in Kagyu and Bön traditions.

By the thirteenth century, the same overview says, terma had become a key source of Tibetan scripture. One treasure text the overview names as having become popular outside Tibet is the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thödol, which comes from a cycle on the peaceful and wrathful deities that Lotsawa House says was revealed by the fourteenth-century tertön Karma Lingpa. Practice cycles are treasures too: the Longchen Nyingtik translation project describes its phowa as a treasure revealed by Jigme Lingpa.

Tradition and scholarship read terma differently. The Tricycle overview notes that terma have often been contested, that their proponents worked to demonstrate their validity, and that scholars suggest attributing terma texts to Padmasambhava “was primarily a way of legitimizing apocryphal scriptures”. It sets this beside similar concerns over new Mahāyāna sutras and tantras in India, texts that, like the treasures, it says show Buddhist movements offering “innovative practices in keeping with tradition”. Questions of authenticity, it adds, “have followed terma from the beginning and remain unresolved.” The account of hiding and revelation given here is the tradition’s own.