A persistent misunderstanding portrays Tantra as being primarily about sexuality and sensual indulgence. In the esoteric Buddhist context, however, references to union are largely symbolic, pointing to the integration of wisdom and compassion or emptiness and appearance. Actual sexual yogas are rare, advanced, and confined to specific lineages, and even there they are framed within strict ethical discipline. The broader path emphasizes mantra, mudrā, mandala, deity yoga, and rigorous moral conduct, rather than the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. When desire and sensory experience are engaged, they are treated as material to be transformed into insight, not as ends in themselves.

Another common misconception reduces Tantric ritual to magic, superstition, or a quest for worldly power. While some rites may address protection, health, or prosperity, they are embedded in a framework of karma, emptiness, and bodhicitta, and are oriented toward awakening and the welfare of beings. Rituals are not meant as sorcery or simple wish‑fulfillment, but as structured methods for transforming consciousness and cultivating specific wholesome mental states. The use of ritual objects and elaborate ceremonies can appear outwardly theatrical, yet their deeper function is to encode stages of the path: purification, generation, union of method and wisdom, and dissolution into emptiness.

Deity visualization is also frequently misunderstood, either as childish make‑believe or as literal worship of external gods. In esoteric Buddhism, deities—peaceful or wrathful—are understood as manifestations of enlightened mind and aspects of awakened qualities, not as independent creator beings. Visualizing such forms is a disciplined contemplative method that reshapes identity, encouraging the practitioner to embody compassion, fearlessness, and wisdom. At the same time, all appearances, including the deity itself, are contemplated as empty, which loosens ego‑clinging and undermines the tendency to reify both self and sacred image.

The secrecy surrounding esoteric teachings is often interpreted as elitism or mystification, and there is a related belief that anyone can safely undertake advanced practices from books or casual instruction. Traditional lineages insist on initiation, oral transmission, and close guidance from a qualified teacher, precisely because these methods are powerful and psychologically intense. Extensive preliminary training in ethics, renunciation, and insight is considered indispensable, and authentic practice is never presented as a shortcut that bypasses foundational discipline. Far from being separate from core Buddhist teachings, esoteric methods are said to rest on the same bases of non‑violence, ethical conduct, bodhicitta, and the realization of emptiness, differing mainly in the skillful means by which those principles are actualized.