Within the esoteric Buddhist traditions, tantric rituals and visualizations function as carefully structured methods for transforming body, speech, and mind into the enlightened body, speech, and mind of a Buddha. Central to this is deity yoga, in which practitioners visualize themselves as enlightened deities and their surroundings as a pure mandala or sacred realm. By repeatedly inhabiting this purified vision, the ordinary sense of being a limited, flawed self in a defiled world is gradually undermined, and a new identity aligned with buddha‑nature is cultivated. This is often described as taking the “result” as the path: one trains as if already enlightened, so that the deep, pre‑conceptual sense of “who one is” shifts toward the qualities of wisdom, compassion, and fearlessness.

These practices also work through a comprehensive integration of body, speech, and mind. Mantras, mudrās, and ritual implements are not mere ornaments; they are skillful means that embody enlightened speech and awareness while focusing and stabilizing attention. Mandala visualizations and ritual offerings encode an entire view of reality, in which all phenomena are seen as interconnected, inherently pure, and expressive of awakened awareness. As these rituals are enacted again and again, the practitioner learns to perceive arising and dissolving experiences as expressions of emptiness and compassion rather than as fixed, solid realities.

A distinctive feature of this path is its approach to emotions and obscurations. Rather than simply suppressing desire, anger, and other afflictive states, tantric methods seek to transform their energy into wisdom. Through association with specific deities and their qualities, desire is linked to discriminating awareness, anger to mirror‑like wisdom, and pride to a wisdom that recognizes equality. In this way, the very forces that ordinarily bind beings to suffering become fuel for realization, and negative karmic patterns are gradually purified.

At more advanced levels, tantric practice is said to work directly with subtle energies and the most refined levels of mind. Through visualizations, mantras, and associated yogic methods, the winds or energies are gathered and dissolved so that coarse conceptual thinking subsides and a very subtle, clear, nondual awareness can manifest. When this luminous, empty nature of mind is recognized and stabilized, the unity of appearance and emptiness, method and wisdom, becomes a lived experience rather than a mere concept. Sustained under proper guidance, such ritual and contemplative disciplines are held to swiftly ripen innate buddha‑nature into full awakening.