Esoteric Buddhism presents the path as a clearly graded journey, rather than a single, undifferentiated method. At the outset, practitioners are expected to establish firm foundations: ethical discipline, refuge, the cultivation of bodhicitta, and preliminary practices such as prostrations, mantra recitation, and guru yoga. These preliminaries are not merely preparatory in a casual sense; they are regarded as the necessary ground for any authentic tantric engagement. In some traditions, this foundational phase also includes basic training in mudrā, mantra, and relatively simple visualizations, which gently introduce the “three mysteries” of body, speech, and mind.

Upon this basis, the path unfolds through progressively more internal and transformative stages of tantra. The four classes of tantra—Action (Kriyā), Performance (Caryā), Yoga, and Highest Yoga (Anuttarayoga)—form a broad hierarchical framework. In the earlier classes, practice emphasizes external ritual, purity, and devotional relationship to a deity seen as distinct from the practitioner, often for purposes such as protection, blessing, and the accumulation of merit. As one moves into Yoga and especially Highest Yoga Tantra, the emphasis shifts decisively toward internal yogic methods and complex deity visualizations, in which body, speech, and mind are consciously identified with the Buddha’s body, speech, and mind.

Within Highest Yoga Tantra, this inner work is further articulated into generation and completion stages. In the generation stage, the practitioner learns to construct and sustain the vivid visualization of the deity and mandala, arising from and dissolving back into emptiness, thereby transforming ordinary appearance into sacred appearance. The completion stage then turns to direct engagement with the subtle body—its channels, winds, and vital essences—together with practices that reveal innate luminosity and great bliss. These methods aim at a direct realization of the inseparability of emptiness and awakened awareness, sometimes including specialized yogas such as inner heat, dream practices, and related disciplines.

Access to these stages is not left to personal preference alone but is regulated through a graded system of initiations (abhiṣeka). Empowerments such as vase, secret, wisdom, and word initiations authorize specific classes of tantra and specific practices, while also purifying body, speech, and mind in increasingly subtle ways. Each empowerment carries commitments and responsibilities, and presupposes a stable relationship with a qualified teacher. In some lineages, further contemplative approaches—such as those that directly introduce the nature of mind—are integrated into this overall structure, usually after sufficient grounding in deity yoga and completion-stage practice. Thus, the esoteric path is envisioned as a carefully staged unfolding, in which ritual, visualization, and subtle yogas are introduced in a deliberate, hierarchical progression.