





































Microsoft Word - Wheeler-final.docx


[Expositions 9.1 (2015) 1–18]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

Keeping the Faith Alive:  

The Tertön as Mythological Innovator in the Tibetan Treasure Tradition 
 

MATTHEW WHEELER 

Pacifica Graduate Institute 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

 

This paper presents a phenomenological study of how the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism 

preserves its religious beliefs amidst significant external and internal cultural shifts through an 

agency of mythopoesis intrinsic to its theological doctrine. The Nyingma School is singular in the 

world of Buddhism for its recognition of tertöns, or “Treasure revealers,” who are men and 

women believed to possess mystical powers that enable them to discover and decipher sacred texts 

and religious relics hidden throughout the Tibetan landscape by Buddhist luminaries and masters 

of the past. These teachings and objects, known as Terma or Treasures, are then shared with the 

community, monastic and secular alike, to advance their quest for enlightenment and liberation in 

a world they perceive to be in perpetual decline. This study will demonstrate how the mythopoeic 

function of the tertön has been efficacious in preserving the Nyingma community’s faith in the 

Buddhist mythos as that mythos is communally perceived from their idiosyncratic worldview. From 

the specific example of the Nyingma’s Terma tradition, a general conclusion can be drawn that 

an internal means of mythopoesis is instrumental to the perpetuation of religious and spiritual 

belief systems whose worldviews become increasingly vulnerable to the momentous changes with 

which globalization has impacted the modern world. 

 

 

A religious tradition’s inability or refusal to adapt to tectonic shifts in political, social, spiritual, 

scientific, and environmental circumstances often eventuates in its gradual decline into 

obsolescence. Without an internal means of reinventing or transforming the belief system, the 

mythological architecture that had formerly housed, grounded, and oriented the existential 

experience of a particular culture or people will tend to depress towards collapse under the forces 

of acculturation or harden into the airtight fastness within which fundamentalists and nativists 

hunker down to shelter from the winds of change. The impacts of globalization and the 

advancements in science and technology in the twenty-first century have made religious belief 

systems more vulnerable to disintegration than ever. A belief system, whether spiritual or secular, 

and the worldview to which it gives shape, is arguably foundational to creating a sense of meaning 

and purpose in the lives of members of any community. A worldview, thus, enables a person to 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  2 
 

experience the world mythically, to find oneself within a mythos. It is a way of seeing, sensing, 

arranging, and interpreting experience. Religious traditions, by and large, have been the principal 

shapers of worldviews for much of human history—but will they continue to maintain this role in 

an increasingly multicultural, rationalistic, and environmentally-unstable modern world? 

This is a popular concern in various fields of study in the humanities, as well as for the 

stakeholders of religious and spiritual belief systems who may see their worldviews being 

threatened. This topical imperative, then, merits investigating current examples of religious 

communities that have been effective in adapting the mythos inherent to their worldview to the 

physical and cultural changes with which they have been beset by the march of time. Before 

moving on to the specific example with which the remainder of this study will concern itself, I 

would like to posit a general answer to the problem discussed thus far: a religious tradition must 

avail itself of an internal agency for mythopoesis to address the existential and spiritual crucibles 

that cosmic and temporal forces invariably thrust upon its devotees. The term mythopoesis and its 

adjectival form mythopoeic have been used differently by various scholars in the history of the 

study of myth, so some explanatory remarks as to its use in this essay are necessary. Though Doty 

primarily limits this term to literary applications, I follow his general definition of mythopoesis to 

mean any act of re-visioning or reinventing earlier mythical concepts and expressions; a “creative 

making,” as he translates it.1 Mythopoesis, then, is the moving of an older mythos into a new 

configuration, most often one that is anticipatory of or responsive to intuitable sea changes 

occurring beneath the surface of contemporary culture. It functions as the adaptive quality by 

which the worldview of a particular community—comprised of a people with a shared sense of 

history and destiny, of values and hopes—can attune itself to the needs of the historical moment 

for its own preservation. 

One religious tradition that has cultivated a mythopoeic mechanism capable of perpetuating the 

efficacy of its spiritual beliefs and ritual praxis is the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. In 

this ancient Vajrayana sect, tertöns (gter ston), or “Treasure revealers,” are believed to possess 

mystical powers that enable those who find them to discover sacred texts and religious relics 

hidden throughout the Tibetan landscape by Buddhist luminaries and masters of the past and 

decipher their arcana. These teachings and objects, known as Terma (gter ma) or Treasures, are 

then shared with the community, clerical and lay alike, to advance their quest for enlightenment 

and liberation. Though the authenticity of some Treasures is sometimes disputed by Nyingma 

authorities and other Buddhist sects in Tibet, the teachings encoded in these texts have quite 

consistently invigorated the Nyingma tradition throughout the last millennium and are given an 

especial eminence in the Nyingma School that is not accorded to them by other Buddhist schools. 

It is the tertön’s singular capacity to introduce innovative teachings and ritual artifacts into the 

Nyingma tradition that has contributed largely to maintaining its spiritual efficaciousness, 

soteriological promise, and cultural relevance to adherents of its brand of Buddhism. This study is 



3  Wheeler 
 

not intended to evaluate the credibility or veracity of the mythical elements of the Terma tradition, 

namely the much-contested authenticity of the Treasures. Rather, it will use a phenomenological 

approach to examine how the Treasures and tertöns perform a mythopoeic role in the Nyingma 

School of Tibet that has effectively galvanized the religion over the centuries and into the present. 

 

1. The Logic of Treasure Concealment: Terma Tradition as “Expedient Means” 

 

Vajrayana Buddhism was introduced into Tibet in the eighth century C.E., where its practitioners 

won the favor and faith of the ruling Yarlung dynasty that reigned from the seventh to ninth 

centuries. Among the enlightened sages that traveled to Tibet during this time period was the 

legendary tantric master Padmasambhava, often referred to as Guru Rinpoche, the Precious 

Teacher, who is recognized by the Nyingma School as its founder and regarded as the second 

Buddha. Thondup says of Padmasambhava with an insider’s conviction that “he was a 

manifestation of the enlightened ones in the form of a great esoteric practitioner and master” 

(emphasis added).2 Despite a dearth of historical data to verify the historicity of Guru Rinpoche’s 

influence on Tibetan Buddhism, Nyingma legend has it that Padmasambhava was summoned from 

India to Tibet by the king Trisong Detsen (ca. 740–798) to pacify and subdue the demons and 

malevolent forces that were thwarting the construction of the Samye temple that the Buddhist king 

had commissioned Santaraksita, the abbot of Nalanda, to build.3 During his stay in Tibet, 

Padmasambhava performed myriad miracles and helped transform the realm into one of the richest 

lands of tantric Buddhism. Among the Guru’s most important contributions was his concealment 

of important tantric teachings, the Treasures, in the mind-streams of various disciples, which were 

to be rediscovered in the future by the tulkus, or reincarnations, of those very students and shared 

with the Tibetan people to deepen their spiritual understanding and offer salvific recourse in a 

degenerate age languishing in a perpetual state of cosmic decline.4 

Being an offshoot of the Mahayana school of Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhists believe in 

cultivating the enlightened attitude of bodhichitta: the dualistic aspiration to achieve buddhahood 

for oneself and also to devote one’s life to assisting others in attaining buddhahood.5 It is in this 

spirit of altruism that Padmasambhava chose to hide his sacred teachings, for they were never 

meant to serve the followers of Buddhism during the reign of the Yarlung dynasty; they were 

intended to serve the people of various epochs in the future when Buddhism would face obstacles 

and threats entirely unique to the temporal circumstances of those respective time periods. In 

addition, most of the Treasures are tantric teachings, and so are esoteric by nature. As opposed to 

the strict austerities characteristic of Theravada praxis or the eons-long devotion to meditation and 

meritorious actions taught in the Mahayana sutras, tantric Buddhism promises, though most 

certainly does not guarantee, liberation for an accomplished acolyte of a tantric master in a single 

lifetime, should the acolyte possess immaculate yogic training and his or her karmic circumstances 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  4 
 

be favorable to buddhahood. The core tenet of the Vajrayana corpus is that an enlightened person 

can perceive absolute truth (nirvana) through engaging—as opposed to withdrawing from—his or 

her existential experience in the world of relative truth (samsara) by expedient means. This process 

is made possible by the empowerment transmitted by a tantric master, a guru, who instructs the 

acolyte how to transmute samsaric reality into that of bliss and emptiness by effectively harnessing 

the channels, energies, and essence of the vajra-body6, or the utterly enlightened Buddha innate 

within all sentient beings.7 So profound are the secrets contained within the tantras that they run 

the risk of being misunderstood and therefore abused or mishandled by a wrongheaded or morally 

weak practitioner.8 In a scene from the Terma text Lady of the Lotus-Born, Padmasambhava 

explains to King Dretsen that tantric insight is so powerful that it must be “hid / From narrow 

minds upon the lower paths.”9 These Treasures that the tertön uncovers, then, are no 

inconsequential artifacts of a bygone era; they are profoundly powerful tools to a person in seek 

of liberation, and so must be withheld from the world until a predetermined moment in time when 

the designated tulku is intended to rediscover them. 

It is around Padmasambhava’s concealment of the Treasures that the Nyingma mythology has 

developed; and in doing so, it has effectively institutionalized its version of Buddhism with an 

agency of mythopoeia. To begin with, the Nyingma School presupposes, with a sound prescience 

uncharacteristic of many other religious systems, that its idiosyncratic Buddhist tradition will at 

some point inevitably encounter cosmic, societal, or spiritual complications that will imperil its 

religious efficaciousness and threaten its longevity. With this dire forecast ever looming on the 

horizon, Nyingma authorities at some point near the beginning of the second millennium adopted 

the Terma mysteries and granted them a scriptural primacy not seen anywhere else in the world of 

Tibetan Buddhism. Only in the Nyingma School are the Treasure texts accorded the same status 

as the teachings of the Buddha.10 In elevating the Terma teachings to the same level of veneration 

as the classical texts of the Sutra or Vinaya Pitakas, the Nyingma have consequently—and, in all 

likelihood, quite consciously—exalted the tertön to the preeminent role of mythic hero, for it is 

only by the tertön’s act of revealing a Treasure that the Nyingma tradition can be revitalized and 

safeguarded as the degenerate age unspools by uncovering tantric texts and other religious objects 

intended to serve the people of that particular moment in history. The following survey will 

examine the intricate process of Treasure transmission, concealment, and rediscovery to illustrate 

the means by which this unique mythological phenomenon affords the Nyingma School the 

mythopoeic innovation needed to sustain its spiritual potency. 

 

2. Dispatches from the Realm of Immortal Light: Treasure Genesis and Transmission 

 

According to the Nyingma School, the Terma teachings originate in the same fashion that all 

Buddhist teachings do: from Buddha. The Treasure transmission paradigm has three stages: (1) 



5  Wheeler 
 

Mind Transmission, when the primordial Buddha (dharmakaya) transmits a tantra from its state 

of eternal emptiness by spontaneously joining minds with a Buddha (sambhogokaya) dwelling in 

an ahistorical buddha-field; (2) Indication Transmission, when the sambhogokaya Buddha 

transmits the tantra to the manifestation of a Buddha (nirmanakaya) that will enter samsara and 

manifest in various ways in order to free beings from suffering; and (3) Aural Transmission, when 

the nirmakaya Buddha, usually Padmasambhava in the Terma corpus, disseminates the tantra 

teachings to a group of ordinary human beings in a historical temporality, usually that of eighth-

century Tibet.11 The final stage of Aural Transmission is comprised of three phases of its own: (1) 

a disciple is appointed by Padmasambhava to rediscover a Treasure at a predetermined point in 

the future; (2) the Treasure is then embedded in the mind-stream of the disciple, which will follow 

the disciple through his or her various reincarnations; and (3) the teaching is normally written as a 

text in a symbolic script and hidden in one of the five elements, where dakinis are entrusted with 

its protection.12 Once the Treasures are concealed, they can only be rediscovered by the appropriate 

tertön, the tulku of the disciple who first heard the teaching from the mouth of Padmasambhava. 

To be certain, in the context of the Tibetan Treasure tradition, the revelation of a Terma text 

would not be a categorically “new” teaching, since the text had already been written down and 

concealed long ago. This would mean that the tertön is not at all the author of the tantras or creator 

of the relics that he or she discovers. The Treasures themselves were not even authored by 

Padmasambhava, though they entered into eighth-century Tibet through him. The Treasures, of 

course, originate spontaneously from Samantabhadra, the dharmakaya Buddha. The matter of 

authorship has important implications to the dynamic of mythopoeia in the Nyingma tradition. 

Technically speaking, mythopoeia could not be possible within the Nyingma worldview, since the 

tantric teachings of the Terma texts originate in the timeless, ahistorical dharmakaya realm. This 

is to say that there is no active mythmaking in progress—the myths (i.e., the teachings) have 

always existed. The tertön, thus, is not engaged in mythopoeic innovation, but merely retrieving 

fragments of a mythological corpus that has not been fully realized in the empirical, historical 

realm. 

That said, when a Treasure revelation occurs, the Nyingma canon and its very self-conception 

as a religion nonetheless undergoes an innovative process, albeit with varying degrees of change. 

Though the Treasures may not be new to historical Tibet, for they were concealed long ago, they 

are indeed scriptural novelties to the contemporary Nyingma community. It is in fact the Nyingma 

School’s capacity to produce a consistent outflow of these Treasures over the years that has 

attracted widespread criticism from other Buddhist sects. The Treasures do indeed add to or 

reinterpret the classical Buddhist canon. To the greater Buddhist community, Terma texts tamper 

with the sacrosanct Dharma taught by the historical Buddha; but to the Nyingma, they enrich and 

elucidate the Buddha’s teachings. With regard to the latter, a brief study of the evolution of the 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  6 
 

Terma tradition will illustrate how the Treasures have consistently bolstered and complemented 

Vajrayana doctrine over the centuries by virtue of their mythopoeic utility. 

 

3. When Shafts of Light Burst into Samsara: Treasure Discovery and Classification 

 

Treasure revelation formally debuts in Tibetan history, at least with a nascent system of Terma 

typology, in the writings of Nyangral Nyima Özer in the second half of the twelfth century, though 

the Nyingma tradition traces the first Treasure discoveries to the earliest centuries of the second 

millennium.13 By this time, the former glory of the Yarlung dynasty, which collapsed under civil 

war during the ninth century, had become the epitome of Tibetan power and innovativeness to 

adherents of the Nyingma tradition, who by the eleventh century, in a temporary state of decline, 

had highly mythologized the Yarlung reign in their histories and hagiographies as a golden age for 

Tibetan Buddhism.14 But contemporaneous with the Treasure revelations of the first tertöns, 

skeptics from the newer Buddhist schools arriving in Tibet at the time authored polemics 

denouncing the Treasures as forgeries, interpolations, or heretical neologies. Thus, an animated 

religious debate was sparked, with the phenomenon of Treasure literature fueling the fire of 

discourse. As Nyingma apologists engaged their detractors and critics in a sustained disputation 

regarding the authenticity of the Treasures, a comprehensive system of taxonomy and 

hermeneutics evolved that enhanced the Nyingma authorities’ evaluative methods of the Treasures 

whenever a revelation occurred, which consequently bolstered the credibility of the Treasures in 

the view of the Nyingma community. In other words, the Terma tradition was maturing from a 

mythical phenomenon into an elaborate religious institution. 

An important hermeneutic developed out of the taxonomical studies conducted by luminaries 

of the Nyingma School: namely, what constitutes a Treasure. Multiple scribes and exegetics have 

written copiously on this subject, but one author’s particular denotation of Terma offers a telling 

representation of the general attitude toward Treasures within the Nyingma community. The 

fifteenth-century apologist Ratna Lingpa defines a Treasure in the following words: “It is a 

Treasure because it is concealed. It is a Treasure because it is hidden. It is a Treasure because it is 

inexhaustible. It is a Treasure because it fulfills needs and wishes.”15 This broad definition, which 

clearly ignores the extraordinary, supernatural phenomena surrounding Terma discoveries, situates 

the revelatory nature of Treasures to tertöns within the mainstream of Mahayana Buddhism, whose 

canonical Pali texts abound in records of sutric masters apprehending profound teachings from 

epiphanic visionary insights, including none other than Sakyamuni himself. In addition, Lingpa’s 

concluding qualification of a Treasure is teleological: it is purely something that “fulfills needs 

and wishes.” Such a definition implies that historical authenticity, though certainly a matter of 

importance, is subordinate to the soteriological efficacy propounded by the revealed tantric text in 

any final assessment of a Treasure’s spiritual value. In other words, the important question for 



7  Wheeler 
 

Nyingma authorities regarding Treasure authenticity is whether or not it will serve the people of 

that immediate time and place. Thus, the primary grounds upon which the Nyingma tradition 

substantiates the historical and canonical validity of its Treasures is to accentuate the inherently 

Buddha-esque means by which these teachings come to be revealed (i.e., enlightened actions), 

rather than establishing an empirically traceable connection to Buddhism’s epicenter in India. 

Andreas Doctor articulates this point exquisitely: “The Treasure teachings repeatedly emphasize 

their roots in the transcendent, and the buddha of the origin account is not always a buddha figure 

connected geographically to India but rather to the principle of enlightenment itself.”16 The 

twentieth-century Tibetan exegetic Dudjom Yeshe Dorje (1904–1987) offers a fitting 

encapsulation of the general hermeneutic at the heart of Nyingma Treasure ideology, where a 

Treasure’s lineage to the transcendent, ahistorical dharmakaya Buddha is privileged over an 

established link to the historical Sakyamuni Buddha: 

 

None the less, some jealous persons created discord by, for example, declaring that 

certain of the ancient tantra had been composed in Tibet because they did not exist 

in India. However the non-existence of those tantras in India did not prove them to 

be inauthentic. Even the tantras which did exist in India did not originate there: they 

were brought forth by great accomplished masters from the domains of the gods, 

nagas, yaksas, dakinis and so on…and later they were introduced to India.17 

 

Thus, a Treasure, like any sutra or tantra, is understood by the Nyingma to be a mere reflection of 

the timeless reality (dharmakaya) that underlies and pervades the ever-turning wheel of samsara. 

It is the mythopoeic task of the tertön, then, to continue the Buddha’s mission of unveiling the 

Dharma to new generations of beings in need of liberation through the revelation of Treasures. 

The discovery, interpretation, and comprehension of a Terma text are feats, as Gyatso notes, 

accomplished through a system of semiotics, where signs and symbols are used to provoke some 

new understanding. The only understanding that Buddhism seeks to unveil is that of the Dharma, 

the revelation of the absolute truth underlying all existence. Treasure texts, as tantric scripture, are 

specific paths to arriving at this point of wisdom. One of the distinguishing characteristics of tantric 

Buddhism is that it uses a multitude of semiotic resources to foster an experience of enlightenment 

for a practitioner, such as the elaborate iconography adorning Tibetan temples, the intricate sand 

drawings of mandalas, and the yidams that are the focus of concentration in Deity Yoga.18 Samsara, 

the material world of birth and death, is itself a system of sensorial semiotics that a siddha learns 

to harness in order to transcend the limitations of his or her mortal existence to experience the 

timeless union of bliss and light, where non-dualistic wisdom shatters all classifications and 

distinctions. So it should not come as a surprise, then, that the tertön’s undertaking of Treasure 

revelation entails navigating through a network of mythical semiotics. 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  8 
 

The process of Terma discovery is riddled with variances, though certain patterns do resonate 

throughout the historical accounts of Treasure revelations. Appendix 1 provides a detailed catalog 

of the semiotic aspects of Treasure concealment and revelation, and is helpful in parsing out the 

intricacies and nuances involved in any tertön’s discovery and subsequent deciphering of Terma 

texts. The following discussion of this process, however, will focus on the most conventional steps 

recorded in the chronicles concerning the unveiling of Earth Treasures, material texts and objects 

found in a physical locality and not exclusively transmitted in and revealed in the mental realm.19 

When the predetermined moment for a particular Treasure revelation arrives, a tertön is directed 

to the hidden location of the Treasure. These prophetic directives are made known to the tertön 

through any one of a common trinity of special mystical signs: during a meditative experience 

(nyams), in a dream (rmi-lam), or in the waking state (dgnos).20 Oftentimes, a prophetic guide 

appears to the tertön as a dakini or even an incarnation of Padmasambhava. Before the tertön 

uncovers the Treasure, he or she will most likely need to pacify the dakinis, nagas, yaksas, 

raksasas, or other spirits charged by Padmasambhava long ago with the guardianship of the 

Treasure. This task is normally completed by performing a feast offering and reciting sadhanas, 

the latter of which is intended to purify the tertön before he or she can access the Treasure. With 

preparations completed, the Treasure is then revealed to the tertön. Most often, the Treasure is a 

tantric text inscribed upon what is commonly referred to as a “yellow scroll,” though the paper can 

be of various colors.21 The scrolls are often found in caskets made of jewels, wood, clay, metals, 

or stone, though they may be stored in other vessels as well.22 The writing on the scroll is either 

encrypted in the symbolic script of the dakinis or an indecipherable variation of Tibetan, Sanskrit, 

or other Indian language, either of which is translatable only to the tertön,23 though there are also 

accounts of tertöns requiring the sagacity of a great tantric master to assist in the decoding of the 

script. Should the Treasures be deemed authentic by the presiding Nyingma authorities, then the 

Treasure will be transcribed and codified into the form of a cycle, the corpus of texts that constitute 

the literary presentation of a Treasure discovery to the general Nyingma community. A typical 

Treasure cycle includes a collation of the following texts: the tantric scripture itself (i.e., a 

transcription of the yellow scroll), known as the “root text”; commentaries on the tantric text; 

sadhanas, usually those recited prior to and after the Treasure’s discovery; explanations of relevant 

ritual and liturgical concerns; and a colophon that details the Treasure’s origin, its rediscovery, 

and biographical information about its respective tertön.24 

The visionary aspect of Treasure revelations is of paramount interest to the present study of the 

mythopoeic utility of Terma. As has been discussed already, mystical insights are common 

occurrences in the world of Buddhism and accepted as plausible forms of enlightenment, so the 

sudden appearance of a dakini to a tertön during meditation or a dream is by no means unusual. 

Where this visionary interaction becomes crucial, however, is in the purpose for that incursion: to 

remind or awaken a long dormant memory in the mind-stream of the tertön, embedded there 



9  Wheeler 
 

centuries earlier by Padmasambhava. The memory, of course, is the location of the Treasure and 

the tantric teaching encoded in it. This mystical encounter with a being from a buddha-field serves 

as testament, at least to the Nyingma, that the “expedient means” of Padmasambhava and other 

Buddhas are active in the current historical period. Gyatso calls this supernatural agency a 

dynamics of incursion, “an incursion of the primordial and authoritative past into the present 

moment of the degenerate age”.25 The “new” texts produced in the final Treasure cycles, then, not 

only offer innovative tantric teachings tailored to meet the needs of a particular people in a specific 

time and place, but they serve as tangible signals of the Buddha’s proactive presence in an age 

tipping further and further into decline and destabilization. 

 

4. Liberation Without Meditation: The Mythopoeic Utility of Non-Textual Earth Treasures 

 

But the Terma texts are not the only Earth Treasures that foster faith and hope in adherents of 

Nyingma Buddhism. Some of the artifacts tertöns discover along with the yellow scrolls—sub-

classified as Material Treasures and Wealth Treasures by Kongtrul—are recognized in the 

Nyingma tradition as having curative, apotropaic, or soteriological benefits, and provide another 

example of mythopoeia in this particular Vajrayana sect. Two of the items revealed on different 

occasions by the famous nineteenth-century tertön Chokgyur Lingpa are illustrative of the non-

textual objects that often appear in caches of Earth Treasures: a statue said “to liberate by sight” 

and sacred pills made from “all buddhas.”26 The statue (kutsab) and the pills (kyedun) are rather 

unique relics in the context of Buddhist theology. Terdak Lingpa’s corpus of Terma texts classifies 

such sacred objects as “buddhahood without meditation” (ma bsgoms sangs rgyas), for they are 

said to liberate a devotee purely through sensorial contact with the artifact.27 

In the case of the kutsab, which translates to “representative,” these statues carved in the image 

of important buddhas, quite often Padmasambhava, are not understood to be icons or likenesses of 

a deified bodhisattva or siddha but their actual equivalents. In other words, to see or touch a kutsab 

is to see or touch Padmasabhava himself, who is said in many Treasure histories to have crafted 

and consecrated these statues so he could be actively “present” for the future generations of the 

degenerate age.28 According to catalogues in Terdak Lingpa’s corpus, kutsabs were fashioned by 

Guru Rinpoche with materials gathered from celestial domains and sacred places by dakinis; 

sometimes he may have inserted the personal possessions or organic matter of a seminal figure 

from the Nyingma lineage or even himself into the statues, such as locks of hair, clothing fragments, 

bone relics, practice substances, blood, or semen.29 To merely see or touch a katsub transmits the 

blessings of a karmically-endowed siddha, like Padmasambhava, to the recipient by virtue of the 

sacred and sanctified composition of the statue. 

Whereas the katsub offers “liberation through seeing,” the kyedun offers “liberation through 

tasting.” These pills are reportedly made from the flesh of one born seven times (skye bdun means 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  10 
 

“seven births”) as a brahmin, which, according to the fifteenth-century Bhutanese tertön Pema 

Lingpa, automatically transforms into the flesh of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara.30 According to 

Nyingma mythology, Padmasambhava hid this sacred flesh in stores of pills as Treasures, 

recovered later by tertöns when such sacra would be beneficial. Though the effects produced by 

swallowing kyedun have been reinterpreted over time by various tertöns and Nyingma authorities, 

today it is understood that ingesting one of these pills does not automatically trigger liberation, 

though it is certainly a possible outcome in the Buddhist worldview, but “offers the prospect of 

seven lifetimes of a ‘body endowed with qualities’ after which time [enlightenment] is achieved.”31 

What is to be made of these relics that offer seemingly antinomian liberation within a religious 

system that postulates buddhahood is only attainable through meditation, a robust cultivation of 

bodhichitta, and favorable karmic circumstances that can take innumerable cycles of death and 

rebirth to garner? In other words, why would Padmasambhava include “shortcuts” to 

enlightenment among his Treasures? Gayley posits that relics like the kyedun and katsub are 

examples of Padmasambhava’s use of “expedient means” to help unenlightened beings onto the 

path of liberation who are born into a degenerate age, when “negativity is rampant, suffering is 

great, and dharma practice is rare.”32 Furthermore, sensorial contact with these artifacts offers the 

possibility of liberation or a reorientation of one’s karmic disposition towards the path of liberation, 

but it does not guarantee liberation. Gayley postulates that grace-bestowal via sensorial contact 

with religious relics in the Nyingma tradition is determined by three factors: 

 

1. the potency of blessings that radiates out from a sacred object, 

2. the occasion of direct contact with it through the senses (i.e., importance of ritual 

context, such as pilgrimage, temple visit, public initiation, audience with a lama), 

and 

3. the receptivity of the individual based on their degree of faith, moral character and 

spiritual capacity.33 

 

Gayley’s final factor is crucial. Buddhahood is only attainable to a mind properly oriented to the 

experience of awakening, a mental configuration made possible by living like a Buddha. 

In reality, there are no shortcuts to liberation in Buddhist doctrine, the Nyingma School included, 

although many Nyingma Terma texts profess their capacity to liberate by one of the six senses, 

which Chögyam Trungpa lists as hearing, wearing, seeing, remembering, tasting, and touching.34 

If a person achieves liberation through a sensorial medium, as opposed to meditation, it is because 

that individual was mentally and morally prepared to do so. An example of this fundamental 

Buddhist principle is made evident throughout the famous Treasure text of Padmasambhava, 

revealed by the tertön Karma Lingpa, known to the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This 

funerary text is read at the bedside of a person who has recently passed away to guide him or her 



11  Wheeler 
 

through the intermediate state (bardo) between death and rebirth. Though this text, which is 

translated as The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo (transliterated as Bardo Thötröl), 

declares that it liberates a dying human from the cycle of samsara merely by being heard, the vast 

majority of it is devoted to accommodating the expiring person’s failure to attain liberation while 

in the bardo. And though the Book of the Dead is intended to be recited to a moribund person, 

Lingpa states, “One should read [the Bardo Thötröl] continually and learn the word-meanings and 

terms by heart”35 throughout one’s life in preparation for the experience of death, which suggests, 

rather ironically, that the text does not in fact certainly liberate through any of the senses 

enumerated by Trungpa as it claims to while one is still technically alive. Once again, the dying 

person must be mentally and karmically oriented to attain liberation. Early in the Book of the Dead, 

Karma Lingpa recommends to the orator entrusted with reciting the text to repeat the instructions 

on how to recognize the Immortal Light personified in the union of Samantabhadra and 

Samantabhadri three to seven times so “it will remind [the dying person] of what he has previously 

been shown by his guru.”36 This demonstrates that though the objective of the Bardo Thötröl is to 

liberate the dying person, there is a presupposition that the deceased individual was previously 

engaged in tantric training under a master and pursuant of siddhahood, thus making him or her 

predisposed to a favorable passage through the bardo. 

The above examples of “buddhahood without meditation” demonstrate that Earth Treasures 

reputed to generate miraculous karmic outcomes, such as health, wealth, or liberation, through 

sensorial contact can only confer such blessings if the votary’s moral character and yogic practices 

are sufficiently in accord with the principles of Dharma. Much like a system of checks and balances, 

this class of Treasures at the least bestows upon the beneficiary—if it bestows anything at all—the 

confidence that a life devoted to attaining wisdom and acting with compassion will yield positive 

karmic consequences, and chart a clearer and quicker course to buddhahood. Such Treasures, if 

deemed soteriologically efficacious by those they are intended to serve, have the potential to 

sustain the Nyingma mythological tradition throughout the ages with each new revelation. 

 

5. The Golden Anchor in the Samsaric Sea: A Coda 

 

Though the Treasure tradition does not preclude the possibility of an individual achieving 

enlightenment by sheer insight alone, it does imbue Terma texts, as Gyatso notes,37 with a spiritual 

gravitas and authenticity not accorded to personal revelation by virtue of their capacity to “[link] 

the present ‘dark age’ to the celebrated past when Buddhism was introduced [to Tibet] and the 

[Yarlung] empire was at its zenith.”38 In other words, the Terma texts are accorded scriptural 

primacy in the Nyingma School for their historical connection to the golden age when 

Padmasambhava and his disciples brought tantric Buddhism to imperial Tibet. With every new 

Treasure revelation, this glorious past is united with the dark present, and not only instills in that 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  12 
 

dark present a much needed sense of meaningfulness and hope, but offers a customized and 

nuanced brand of Buddhism attuned to the needs of the people in a particular historical time period. 

If a religious tradition lapses into the doldrums of imaginative stagnation, becomes frozen in 

doctrinal calcification, or fixates on an irretrievable paradisal past, it dispenses with the visionary 

foresight and hermeneutical versatility needed to adapt to and accommodate the vagaries and 

vicissitudes that the future inevitably keeps in store. To weather those periods punctuated by 

cosmic injustices and spiritual ruts, when the collective ethos has sunk to its nadir, a religious or 

spiritual belief system must rely on mythopoeic innovation and reinvention to invigorate the life-

furthering, soul-orienting potency it was always intended to effect in its followers. With regard to 

the Terma tradition in Tibet, it is indeed possible that as long as tertöns can produce Treasures of 

persuasive soteriological value for the Nyingma community that its brand of Buddhism will 

continue to prosper in its corner of the world, animating the faith and hope of the people whom it 

is meant to guide towards enlightenment and liberation. 

  



13  Wheeler 
 

Appendix 1. Aspects of Semiotic Feats in the Concealment and Revelation of Treasure Texts39 

 
 

Aspect Description Tibetan Rendering 

1. Encryption of Treasure Treasure is encrypted (usually) in a dakini 

alphabet following the Tantric 

Empowerment Ceremony. 

 

“type of letters” 

(yig rigs) 

 

2. Presentation of Treasure At the appropriate time in the future, the 

tertön comes into physical or psychological 

contact with the hidden text through one of 

three media. 

 

“introduce to” 

(ngo sprod) 

   A. Key Treasure code is deciphered through a key. 

 

“key” 

(lde mig can) 

 

   B. External presentation Empirical object, person, or event unveils 

Treasure to tertön. 

“certainty through 

circumstances” 

(rkyen las nges) 

 

   C. Internal presentation Treasure is hierophanically unveiled by a 

sudden psycho-spiritual event within the 

tertön. 

“without regard for 

[an alphabet or 

external 

circumstances]” 

(gnyis la mi ltos) 

 

3. Revelation of Treasure’s 

meaning 

The variety of ways the Treasure’s encrypted 

meaning becomes understood to the tertön. 

“set out” 

(‘god tshul) 

 

   A. Symbol mnemonic Tertön unlocks the Treasure’s meaning 

quickly after identifying a character or 

symbol in the text itself (i.e., pictorial cue). 

 

“just an 

appearance” (snang 

tsam) 

   B. Evocation Two modes by which the tertön unlocks 

Treasure’s meaning after being reminded of 

its contents from particular cues. 

 

“just a support” 

(rten tsam) 

      i. Textual mnemonic Tertön unlocks the Treasure’s meaning after 

reading the title, introduction, or some other 

sections of the text (i.e., literal or phonetic 

cue). 

 

“evocation by a 

section of text” 

(dngos skul byed) 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  14 
 

      ii. Memory mnemonic Two ways that a tertön unlocks the 

Treasure’s meaning by recalling signaling 

memories from a past life. 

“evocation through 

a recollection”  

(rjes dran skul 

byed) 

 

        ii. a. Direct recollection A section of encoded text prompts the reader 

to recall peripheral events of the time and 

place when Treasure was initially revealed to 

him/her, normally from a Tantric 

Empowerment Ceremony with 

Padmasambhava. 

 

 

        ii. b. Indirect recollection 

 

 

An internal or external event jolts a past-life 

memory to consciousness prompting an 

epiphanic unveiling of the Treasure’s 

meaning (e.g., hearing the word “diamond” 

reminds the discoverer of a Treasure 

concerning Vajrasattva, “The Diamond 

Being”).  

 

 

 

 

C. Divine revelation 

 

Treasure simply “descends” (beb) 

unsolicited to the tertön and makes its 

meaning known. 

 

“freely put forth” 

(thar chags) 

  

   

 

  



15  Wheeler 
 

Endnotes 
 

1. Doty 2000, 464. 

2. Thondup 1994, 50. 

3. Thondup 1994, 53. These menacing spirits and malignant agents are most likely 

mythologized avatars representing the ministers and pantheon of the Bön religion. Chapter 

seven of the Padmakara Translation Group’s version of the Terma text Lady of the Lotus-

Born, discovered by the tertön Taksham Samten Lingpa, recounts this historical clash in a 

highly dramatic and fantastical debate between Buddhist adepts and Bön wizards 

competing for the king’s sponsorship and consequently the religious sovereignty of Tibet. 

4. Gyatso 1986, 11. 

5. Watson 1997, 6. 

6. Thondup 1994, 17. 

7. Mahaffey 2013, 6. 

8. Changchub and Nyingpo 2002, xxiv. 

9. Changchub and Nyingpo 2002, 21. 

10. Gyatso 1986, 7. 

11. Thondup 1994, 46. 

12. Thondup 1994, 69. 

13. There is discrepancy in the scholarship on chronology here. Gyatso locates the first 

revelations in the tenth century (1986, 7), while Doctor places them in the eleventh century 

(2005, 31). 

14. Gyatso 1993, 113. 

15. Quoted in Doctor 2005, 35. 

16. Doctor 2005, 41. 

17. Quoted in Doctor 2005, 42. 

18. Mahaffey 2013, 3. 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  16 
 

19. In his anthology of Treasure revelations entitled Store of Precious Treasures, the 

nineteenth-century hagiographer Jamgön Kongtrul developed the most recent and thorough 

taxonomy of Treasures, which falls into various sub-classifications under two main 

categories: Earth Treasures, which are discussed above, and Mind Treasures, which are 

revealed purely from the mind-stream of the tertön where Padmasambhava originally 

concealed them, negating the need of a material text or object; see Doctor 2005, 26. 

20. Gyatso 1993, 109. 

21. Earth Treasures, it should be noted, are often a trove of materials found along with the 

yellow scrolls. For example, in his New Treasures chronicle of the great tertön Chokgyar 

Dechen Shigpo Lingpa (1829–1870), Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo records the following 

inventory of a Treasure uncovered by Lingpa in the vicinity of Sengchen Namdrak on June 

12, 1857: the cycle of Six Scrolls of the Sacred Teaching, a secret manuscript, a crown 

belonging to Padmasambhava, a seal belonging to prince Murub Tsenpo, robes belonging 

to the Buddha, and spiritual medicine prepared by Garab Dorje; see Doctor 2005, 90. 

22. See Thondup 1994, 70. For instance, Khyentse records that at Bumdzong Lake the tertön 

Chokgyar Lingpa was given a yellow scroll of the Embodiment of the Realization of the 

Dharma Protectors by a naga, who brought the Treasure to the surface of the lake in a 

stone container held between its teeth; see Doctor 2005, 91. 

23. Thondup 1994, 69. 

24. Gyatso 1986, 8. 

25. Gyatso 1993, 132. 

26. Doctor 2005, 91. 

27. Gayley 2007, 487. 

28. Gayley 2007, 477. 

29. Gayley 2007, 479. 

30. Gayley 2007, 470. 

31. Gayley 2007, 471. 

32. Gayley 2007, 491. 

33. Gayley 2007, 489. 



17  Wheeler 
 

34. Fremantle and Trungpa 2003, xi. 

35. Fremantle and Trungpa 2003, 93. 

36. Fremantle and Trungpa 2003, 37. 

37. Gyatso 1986, 11. 

38. Doctor 2005, 19. 

39. All Tibetan terms and their translations are taken from Gyatso 1986, 18–21. 

 

Works Cited 
 

Changchub, Gyalwa, and Namkhai Nyingpo. 2002. Lady of the Lotus-Born: The Life and 

Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal. Boston: Shambhala. 

Doctor, Andreas. 2005. Tibetan Treasure Literature: Revelation, Tradition, and 

Accomplishment in Visionary Buddhism. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications. 

Doty, William G. 2000. Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals. 2nd ed. Tuscaloosa, 

AL: University of Alabama Press. 

Fremantle, Francesca, and Chögyan Trungpa. 2003. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Boston: 

Shambhala. 

Gayley, Holly. 2007. “Soteriology of the Senses in Tibetan Buddhism.” Numen 54.4: 459–499. 

Gyatso, Janet. 1986. “Signs, Memory and History: A Tantric Buddhist Theory of Scriptural 

Transmission.” The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 9.2: 7–36. 

_____. 1993. “The Logic of Legitimation in the Tibetan Treasure Tradition.” History of 

Religions 33.2: 97–134. 

Mahaffey, Patrick. 2013. “3rd Class Session Lecture: Vajrayana Buddhism.” Studies 605: 

Buddhist Traditions. Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA. March 12. Handout. 

Thondup, Tulku. 1994. Hidden Teachings of Tibet: An Explanation of the Terma Tradition of 

Tibetan Buddhism. Boston: Wisdom Publications. 

Trungpa, Chögyam. 2003. Foreword. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Eds. Francesca Fremantle 

& Chögyan Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala. xi–xii. 



Tertön as Mythological Innovator  18 
 

Watson, Burton. 1997. Introduction. The Vimalakirti Sutra. Trans. New York: Columbia 

University Press. 1–14. 


