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The Guhyagarbha Tantra (Skt.; Tib. རྒྱུད་གསང་བ་སྙིང་པོ་, Gyü Sangwé Nyingpo; Wyl. rgyud gsang ba'i snying po, "The Tantra of the Secret Essence" or the "Secret Womb Tantra") is the most important Buddhist tantra of the Mahayoga class and the primary tantric text studied in the Nyingma tradition.[1] It is the main Nyingma source for understanding empowerment, samaya, mantras, mandalas and other Vajrayana topics, and has influenced the Dzogchen tradition. The Nyingma scholar Longchenpa sees it as "the highest summit of all vehicles, the source of all verbal transmissions, the great great shortcut of the vehicle of all Buddhas of the three times, the most secret."[1]
Morten Ostensen (2019) tenders that the concept of the 'buddha-nature' - specifically as 'sugata-garbha' (Wylie: bde gshegs snying po) - may first have entered the discourse of Tibet and the wider Himalaya through the translation of the Indian Sanskrit manuscript of the Guhyagarbha Tantra in the eighth century - which briefly mentions the sugata-garbha specifically - during the first dissemination or transmission period (Wylie: bstan pa snga dar) of tantra literature into the Himalaya.[2]