Effective Tantra Practice

To develop an effective tantra practice it’s important to correctly identify and be convinced of our Buddha-nature factors and realize that our emotional and cognitive obscurations limit them. We understand that to attain a presently-happening state of Buddhahood, we need not only to focus on labeling our conventional “me” on our not-yet-happening enlightenment as represented by a Buddha-figure, but we also need to rid ourselves of these obscurations. Accomplishing that requires purifying ourselves of our negative potential and building up our positive potential dedicated to enlightenment with bodhichitta. Therefore, to make our tantra practice effective, we have to do what are known as preliminaries, the preparatory practices. Without them, our tantra practice will not be very effective.