Seventeen tantras

This article contains Tibetan script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Tibetan characters.

The Seventeen Tantras of the Esoteric Instruction Series (Tibetan: མན་ངག་སྡེའི་རྒྱུད་བཅུ་བདུན, Wylie: man ngag sde'i rgyud bcu bdun) or the Seventeen Tantras of the Ancients (rnying-ma'i rgyud bcu-bdun) are an important collection of tantras in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism.^[1][2] They comprise the core scriptures of the "esoteric instruction series" (Menngagde) of Dzogchen teachings and are its most authoritative scriptures.^[1][2]

The Seventeen Tantras are part of the Vima Nyingthig ("Inner Essence of Vimalamitra"), a terma cycle of Dzogchen texts revealed by the treasure discoverer Zhangton Tashi Dorje (c. 1097-1127) and associated with the 8th century Indian monk Vimalamitra who is traditionally believed by the Nyingma school to have first brought these texts to Tibet.^[3]

The Vima Nyingthig itself consists of 'tantras' (rgyud), 'agamas' (lung), and 'upadeshas' (man ngag). The other texts are mainly exegetical literature on the material found in the Seventeen tantras.^[4] The Seventeen Tantras explain the view (lta ba) of Dzogchen, the two main forms of Dzogchen meditation (sgom pa) - kadag trekchö ("the cutting through of primordial purity"), and lhündrub tögal ("the direct crossing of spontaneous presence") - and the conduct (spyod pa) of a Dzogchen practitioner, along with other ancillary topics.^[5][6]