Vajrayāna emerges as a Buddhist tradition that consciously absorbs and reshapes elements from both Hindu tantra and the Tibetan Bön religion, while orienting them toward the realization of emptiness, compassion, and awakening. From Hinduism, it takes over the basic tantric “technology”: mantras and seed syllables, maṇḍalas, mudrās, initiatory rites, and subtle-body yogas involving channels, winds, and inner heat. These methods, already highly developed in Śaiva and Śākta milieus, are retained in form but reinterpreted so that deities and rituals function as expressions of mind’s empty and luminous nature rather than as devotion to creator gods. Even the polarity of Śiva and Śakti is recast as the union of method (upāya) and wisdom (prajñā), a symbolic language for nonduality rather than a theogonic drama. Hindu deities and iconographic motifs—multi-armed figures, wrathful forms, consort pairs—are not simply adopted but transformed into Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and protectors whose roles are subordinated to the bodhisattva ideal.

In the Tibetan context, Vajrayāna encounters Bön and related indigenous traditions and again chooses transformation over erasure. Local gods, mountain deities, serpent spirits, and a host of other beings are ritually “converted” into dharmapālas and guardians, bound by oath to protect the Buddhist teachings and the communities that uphold them. Shamanic and ritual practices—exorcisms, healing rites, ransom rituals, weather rites, and various forms of spirit pacification—are preserved in recognizable form, yet they are reframed within a Buddhist cosmology of karma, rebirth, and the path to enlightenment. Sacred mountains, lakes, and caves that once belonged to an earlier religious landscape become Buddhist pilgrimage sites and retreat places, envisioned as maṇḍalas of Buddhas and accomplished yogins. In this way, both the Hindu tantric structures and the Bön indigenous content are woven into a single tapestry, where inherited symbols and powers are redirected toward the swift realization of Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings.