The Double Dorje: Looking at Modern Vajrayana Buddhism.
Termas and Tertons - Treasures from Out There!
Wed, 26 Feb 2025
Termas and tertons – spiritual treasures and their finders – are an inescapable feature of some branches of Tibetan Buddhism. Come along for the magical ride! A phurbu A ngagpa, undoubtedly a practitioner of termas. Note the phurbu tucked into his belt. Words or phrases you might want to look up: Terma Terton Nyingma Dudjom Jamyang Khyentse Jamgon Kongtrul The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, its Fundamentals and History by Dudjom Rinpoche Hidden Teachings of Tibet by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche The Life and Teaching of Chokgyur Lingpa #Buddhism #Vajrayana #DoubleDorje #Dzogchen #Nyingma #Terma #Terton #Dudjom
Chapter 1: What are termas and tertons in Tibetan Buddhism?
Termas and tertumas, spiritual treasures in their finders that is, they are an inescapable feature of some branches of Tibetan Buddhism. If you can't at least go along for the ride, if that's the way to put it, of the magical aspects of the term or tradition, then the Nyingma teachings and practice may not be for you. So anyway, hello to all my good listeners old and new.
Chapter 2: Who is Alex Wilding and what is the Double Dorje Podcast about?
This is the Double Doge, I'm Alex Wilding, and today I want to look at one of those aspects of Tibetan Buddhism whose value may be universal, but which are deeply woven into certain magical beliefs. I'm talking about termers, which we can call treasures, and tertons, the finders of those treasures.
This might be boring, but first, can I ask you to remember to like, better still, to subscribe, and even better than that, tell all your friends about this podcast. And if you're looking for the extra material, and that extra material doesn't appear in your channel, which it doesn't on most channels, take a look at where the Double Doge podcast is actually hosted. At the moment, that is Podbean.
Chapter 3: How are termas and their significance explained?
It would be impossible to be involved with Nyingma teaching in particular without having come across Tema teachings, probably many times. All the same, outside that circle, many people may not have heard of this kind of thing at all. So I think we have to begin with a very brief definition and expand from there. In short, the syllable ter refers to treasure of some kind.
It has connotations of the wealth, the treasure or the value that is bound up with the land and the geography of a place. In this sense, it's not necessarily religious or spiritual at all, but in the sense we're using here, it refers to spiritual treasures which can perhaps be physical in the form of a perbu or kilaya.
This is a kind of ritual dagger whose blade has three edges and it's used in a range of practices often associated with certain protector deities. The terma can on occasion be something like a figurine, perhaps a form perhaps of the Buddha or of Guru Rinpoche or some other magical object. In our context here, terma most often refers to a text
In that case, though, the text may well not be written out in full, but may consist of a piece of paper, classically a yellow parchment, with writing on it in the mysterious script of the Dakinese. The treasure finder, the terton, must decipher or decode this. The decoding might be quite difficult, and can require a great deal of ritual and retreat.
I remember the late Atto Rinpoche relating a story about Jamyangchensei and Jamgong Kongtrul, which would have taken place in our 19th century. Unfortunately, I don't have a textual reference for this, and I'm repeating the story from memory, so if any listener can supply more accurate or reliable information, I, for one, would love to hear it.
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Chapter 4: What are some famous stories related to termas?
Anyway, the story goes that the two of them were in possession... of a physical terma, I believe one of these famous pieces of yellow parchment, with, as one might expect, some mysterious symbols in darkening writing on it. This was put into a skull cup containing nectar. The nectar would mainly have consisted of beer or grain spirit, at least that's my guess.
Our two lamas sat across from one another with the cup between them, reciting appropriate prayers and mantras. As they continued, syllables in legible script bubbled up and appeared on the surface of the nectar and were written down by an assistant. As far as I know, most decoding of termas is rather less dramatic than this.
A common place for termas to be found is in the ground, perhaps in openings in a cliff that's very difficult to access. But they're also said to be found in the water, in space, or in the case of a terma, that is a text sometimes deep in the teaton's mind.
Chapter 5: Where are termas typically found?
The general theory is that the tertons, at least what are known as the great tertons, are the rebirths of the 25 main disciples that Guru Rinpoche is said to have had during his time in Tibet, which was in our Western 8th to 9th centuries.
Guru Rinpoche is said to have given the disciples these teachings and they vowed to be reborn at the right place and the right time to reveal these treasures when they are needed. If someone were to claim to give you the history of, let's say, English theatre from 1100 to the present day in the course of a podcast of about 20 minutes, you would know.
assuming that the historian was not just an idiot, that you were only going to get a very brief sketch, and that many or even most of the important plays, playwrights, theatres, actors and so on would not even get mentioned. The same applies here, including, of course, the possibility that I am a complete idiot.
Chapter 6: What is the historical context of tertons?
I just want to make clear that I have neither the knowledge nor the time to attempt such a history, My simple hope is to give you a flavour of what this is about. So I'm going to give you at least a couple of much fuller references in case you want to look into this in more detail. To begin with, a mighty work.
For the title, it's The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, Its Fundamentals and History. It was written by Dujam Rinpoche after so many Tibetans had had to flee their homeland as a result of the Chinese invasion, and it was composed as part of an effort to preserve the spiritual culture. Dujam Rinpoche was himself a prolific tertan, as was his predecessor, Dujam Lingpo.
A huge effort was made to prepare a translation of this book into English. and was first published in 1991. My copy, which is from the first edition, is in two volumes, one having about 1,000 pages and one of about 500 pages. I have heard that later editions have about 1,500 pages in a single volume, And I've also heard that the paper is much thinner, which is hardly a surprise.
I would be curious to hold one of those in my hand sometime and see whether it is as unwieldy as it sounds or not. It's a comprehensive work, stretching from the teachings of the early schools of Buddhism, including their history and their philosophies, all the way through the great vehicle teachings of compassion and emptiness, and on to the Vajrayana.
Chapter 7: What are the recommended readings on Tibetan Buddhism and termas?
about 140 pages are given over to histories of some of the most important tertons. The reference section of this work is valuable in its own right, with a glossary of more than 80 pages on the important enumerations, that's to say those lists of the two this, I count there are 41 of those twos, the three that, the four the other, and on and on through the 101 thing and the 84,000 other things.
Not perhaps something to study, but a great reference. But that is a mighty tome and it's not cheap either, so maybe it would not be for everyone. More accessible and enormously illuminating is a book titled Hidden Teachings of Tibet by Tulkutandup Rinpoche.
Tulkutandu spent a good part of his life in English-speaking environments, starting in India during the 60s and 70s, and then in America, where at one point he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, until his death somewhat over a year ago. This book was therefore written very much with Westerners in mind, and the best word I can think of to describe it is fascinating.
There are also words for Tulkutandup's output, such as sound, learned, authoritative and insightful. This particular book, Hidden Teachings, is also relatively cheap. Before leaving the virtual library, I'm really keen to mention a very short work, The Life and Teaching of Chokyur Lingpa. Chogyalingpa was, as you might guess, an important tertan.
I think you can get cheaper editions, but it does appear that my penchant for buying Buddhist books has brought me again a first edition of this. At just over 60 pages, and they're not large pages either, I'm astonished to see it advertised as a collectible item on Amazon with an asking price of $127. But mine is not for sale.
Anyway, the real reason I wanted to mention it was because of a delightful insight into the mindset of this world, which is offered to us on the very first page of the biography, where we are told that, and I quote, That gives you an insight, doesn't it? By now, some of you may be wondering what a text treasure or terma actually says.
The size varies enormously, and the majority are based on instructions for ritual and meditation. A terma may well include one or more instructions for a sadhana, which, as you probably know, is a procedure for invoking, visualizing and reciting the mantra of a particular deity or group of deities, forms of the Buddha. I have seen a terma text that is one page long.
The works of Dujam Rinpoche contain a high proportion of termas and his full collected works extend to 25 volumes, each of which contains several hundred pages. This, unsurprisingly enough, is a collection of many individual termas.
Some of these volumes are each dedicated to one particular cycle of practice and teachings, which might include a number of liturgies, prayers, practice instructions, yogic techniques, preliminaries, activity practices, long life practices, a whole armory of stuff to do. The collected works of his predecessor, Tujam Lingpa, run to 20 volumes of a similar sort of size.
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