Within Tibetan Buddhism, ritual life is not an ornament added to doctrine but a primary vehicle through which Mahāyāna vision and Vajrayāna method are woven into daily practice. Among the most characteristic is tsok, the tantric feast gathering. Performed on specific lunar days, it brings practitioners together to consecrate and share food, drink, and symbolic substances while visualizing the environment as a pure mandala and themselves as deities. This communal offering renews and repairs tantric commitments, strengthens the bond with meditational deities and lineage, and serves as a powerful means of purifying obstacles and accumulating merit and wisdom. The rhythm of offering, enjoyment, and dissolution in tsok also reflects the contemplative emphasis on impermanence and emptiness.

Puja, by contrast, is a broader term for formal ritual worship or service, usually conducted in a group setting with liturgical texts. These ceremonies may be directed toward buddhas, bodhisattvas, gurus, or dharma protectors, and typically include recitation, visualization, mantra, musical instruments, and structured prayers such as the seven-branch offering. Water bowls and other offerings are arranged as gestures of hospitality to enlightened beings, while the dedication of merit at the end links ritual activity to the bodhisattva ideal. Protector pujas, including those for Mahākāla and related deities, add a distinctive wrathful dimension, using torma offerings and forceful melodies to safeguard the teachings and practitioners.

Surrounding these central forms are a range of other characteristic practices that give Tibetan Buddhism its rich ritual texture. Empowerments authorize and bless tantric practice through staged initiations, involving ritual purification, entry into the deity’s mandala, and the conferral of mantra and instruction. Smoke offerings purify environments and relationships with unseen beings through fragrant substances burned as offerings to local spirits and protectors. Long-life ceremonies, directed especially toward spiritual teachers, combine elaborate offerings and prayers to support the continuity of the lineage. Torma offerings, sculpted from barley flour and butter, appear across many of these rites as versatile symbols of generosity, supplication, and the transformation of ordinary substances into vehicles of awakening.