Within Tibetan Buddhism, the vajra path unfolds as a graduated training that rests upon a Mahāyāna foundation and then proceeds through preliminaries and higher tantric stages. Before the explicitly tantric elements, practitioners cultivate refuge, bodhicitta, and the insight of emptiness, together with the reflections often called the “four thoughts that turn the mind”: precious human birth, impermanence and death, karma and its results, and the defects of saṃsāra. This basis of renunciation and compassion is not merely preparatory in a chronological sense; it is the ethical and contemplative ground that must quietly permeate everything that follows. On that ground, the vajra path becomes a way of transforming perception, body, speech, and mind in a systematic manner.

Ngöndro, the preliminary practices, is the formal gateway into this transformation. These preliminaries are commonly divided into contemplative reflections on the four thoughts and the so‑called “inner” accumulations: refuge with prostrations, the cultivation of bodhicitta, Vajrasattva mantra recitation for purification, maṇḍala offerings to gather merit and wisdom, and guru yoga to unite one’s mind with the awakened mind of the teacher. Traditionally performed in large numbers, these practices are said to purify obscurations and accumulate the conditions needed for deeper realization. They are not merely mechanical prerequisites but a way of reshaping the practitioner’s whole orientation, so that the higher tantras are approached with humility, devotion, and clarity.

On the basis of ngöndro and empowerment, the path then moves into the structured world of tantra proper. Tibetan presentations speak of four classes of tantra—Kriyā, Caryā, Yoga, and Anuttarayoga—each progressively emphasizing internal meditation over external ritual and deepening the identification with the deity. While the outer tantras focus more on ritual purity, supplication, and a gradual internalization of the deity, Anuttarayoga Tantra is regarded as the highest level, where the most profound methods for transforming body, speech, and mind are found. Here the practitioner is authorized to engage in specific sādhana practices, in which the deity is no longer simply an object of devotion but the very form of one’s own awakened potential.

Within Anuttarayoga Tantra, the path is often described in terms of two complementary stages: generation and completion. In the generation stage (bskyed rim), ordinary appearances are dissolved into emptiness, and the practitioner arises as a yidam deity within a maṇḍala, cultivating pure appearance, divine pride, and the union of appearance and emptiness through visualization, mantra, and symbolic gesture. When this pure appearance becomes stable, the completion stage (rdzogs rim) emphasizes direct work with the subtle body—channels, winds, and drops—through yogas such as inner heat, dream and illusory body practices, and the eliciting of the clear‑light mind. The culmination of the vajra path is described as the inseparable union of great bliss and emptiness, in which the transformed body, speech, and mind manifest as the enlightened activity of a Buddha for the benefit of beings.