Training the mind is the key to achieving lasting peace and happiness. The Buddhist path begins with cultivating the three higher trainings of self discipline, meditative concentration, and the wisdom understanding emptiness. When these three have been made firm one can take up the methods of the bodhisattva path, in which one cultivates the aspiration to achieve highest enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, and on the basis of that aspiration engages in the six perfections of generosity, self-discipline, patience, effort, meditative stabilisation and wisdom. Finally, these methods can be complemented with the tantric practices which begin with the receiving of the initiations and tantric commitments, and involve the powerful training of the generation and completion yogas. In this we can transport the mind to the state of final enlightenment.
Tantric practice is more powerful than the general sutra training for a number of reasons.
One of these is that it fully integrates the factors of method and wisdom. In Buddhahood, method and wisdom, body and mind, are of one taste, the tantric path utilises this dynamic from the very beginning, and thus produces a far more rapid enlightenment. This is a feature of all four classes of tantras. In highest yoga tantra this principle is taken even further, with the practitioner utilising the most subtle levels of bodily energies and of consciousness, levels inaccessible to the untrained person. This empowers one to enter into the tantric yogas, and plants the seeds for future realisation.