The completion stage is one of the two stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra. Completion stage may also be translated as perfection stage or fulfillment mode. The other stage of Anuttarayoga Tantra, which generally precedes the completion stage, is the generation stage

Generation stage

In Tantric Buddhism, the generation stage is the first phase of meditative Buddhist sādhana associated with the 'Father Tantra' class of anuttara-yoga-tantras of the Sarmapa or associated with what is known as Mahayoga Tantras by the Nyingmapa...

 (Tibetan:kye rim; Sanskrit:utpatti-krama).

The completion stage is the second phase of the Vajrayana

Vajrayana

Vajrayāna Buddhism is also known as Tantric Buddhism, Tantrayāna, Mantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Esoteric Buddhism and the Diamond Vehicle...

 Buddhist sadhana

Sadhana

Sādhanā literally "a means of accomplishing something" is ego-transcending spiritual practice. It includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu, Sikh , Buddhist and Muslim traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives.The historian N...

, or practice texts, associated with the Anuttarayoga Tantra, which in Dzogchen

Dzogchen

According to Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, Dzogchen is the natural, primordial state or natural condition of the mind, and a body of teachings and meditation practices aimed at realizing that condition. Dzogchen, or "Great Perfection", is a central teaching of the Nyingma school also practiced by...

 correspond to the Inner Tantras

Inner Tantras

The Inner Tantras are the final three divisions in the ninefold division of practice according to the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. They comprise the Mahayoga, Anuyoga and Atiyoga...

: Mahayoga

Mahayoga

Mahayoga is the designation of the first of the three Inner Tantras according to the ninefold division of practice used by the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism....

, Anuyoga

Anuyoga

Anuyoga is the designation of the second of the three Inner Tantras according to the ninefold division of practice used by the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism...

 and Ati Yoga. Although completion stage appears in the Anuttarayoga Tantra in general, it is especially associated with the Mother Tantras such as the Hevajra Tantra. Completion stage practices are therefore associated with the development of a Vajra Body

Three Vajras

The Three Vajras namely 'body', 'speech' and 'mind' are a formulation within Tibetan Buddhism and Bon which holds the full experience of the 'openness' of Buddha-nature, void of all bar the 'qualities' and 'marks' and establishes a sound experiential key upon the 'continuum of the path' to...

, through practices that purify the movement of lung

Lung (Tibetan Buddhism)

Lung is a word that means wind or breath. It is a key concept in the Vajrayana traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and as such is part of the symbolic 'twilight language', used to non-conceptually point to a variety of meanings. Lung is a concept that's particularly important to understandings of the...

 in the subtle body

Subtle body

A subtle body is one of a series of psycho-spiritual constituents of living beings, according to various esoteric, occult, and mystical teachings...

.

Definition

The Dharma Dictionary defines the 'Completion Stage' as follows:

One of the two aspects of Vajrayana

Vajrayana

Vajrayāna Buddhism is also known as Tantric Buddhism, Tantrayāna, Mantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Esoteric Buddhism and the Diamond Vehicle...

 Practice. The meaning and depth of this principle changes while ascending through the three outer sections and the three inner sections of Tantra. For instance, the completion stage defined as the dissolving of the visualization of a deity corresponds to Mahayoga; the "Completion stage with marks" based on yogic practices such as tummo corresponds to Anu Yoga: and the "Completion stage without marks" is the practice of Ati Yoga.

The completion stage engages creative imagination or visualization and emphasizes the voidness aspect of reality as a skillful means

Upaya

Upaya is a term in Mahayana Buddhism which is derived from the root upa√i and refers to a means that goes or brings one up to some goal, often the goal of Enlightenment. The term is often used with kaushalya ; upaya-kaushalya means roughly "skill in means"...

 of personal transformation. The completion stage employs the "mystic vortices" of the body, the cakra

Chakra

Chakra is a concept originating in Hindu texts, featured in tantric and yogic traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Its name derives from the Sanskrit word for "wheel" or "turning" .Chakra is a concept referring to wheel-like vortices...

, the subtle energy of the subtle body

Subtle body

A subtle body is one of a series of psycho-spiritual constituents of living beings, according to various esoteric, occult, and mystical teachings...

, the five prana

Prana

Prana is the Sanskrit word for "vital life" .It is one of the five organs of vitality or sensation, viz. prana "breath", vac "speech", chakshus "sight", shrotra "hearing", and manas "thought" Prana is the Sanskrit word for "vital life" (from the root "to fill", cognate to Latin plenus...

s or vāyu

Vayu

Vāyu is a primary Hindu deity, the Lord of the winds, the father of Bhima and the spiritual father of Lord Hanuman...

, together with the channels, the nadi

Nadi (yoga)

' are the channels through which, in traditional Indian medicine and spiritual science, the energies of the subtle body are said to flow. They connect at special points of intensity called chakras...

 through which the energy flows in order to generate the 'great bliss' (Tibetan: Dem Chog or bde-mchog; Sanskrit: Maha-sukha) associated with bodhi

Bodhi

Bodhi is both a Pāli and Sanskrit word traditionally translated into English with the word "enlightenment", but which means awakened. In Buddhism it is the knowledge possessed by a Buddha into the nature of things...

 or enlightenment.

Keith Dowman, in elucidating the spiritual disciplines of the Mahasiddhas, links the completion stage with the Two Truths, voidness, along with a suite of advanced Mahamudra

Mahamudra

Mahāmudrā literally means "great seal" or "great symbol." It "is a multivalent term of great importance in later Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism" which "also occurs occasionally in Hindu and East Asian Buddhist esotericism."The name refers to the way one who...

 sadhana

Sadhana

Sādhanā literally "a means of accomplishing something" is ego-transcending spiritual practice. It includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu, Sikh , Buddhist and Muslim traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives.The historian N...

 and other practices that are related to the Six Yogas of Naropa

Six Yogas of Naropa

The Six Yogas of Nāropa , also called the six dharmas of Naropa and Naro's six doctrines , are a set of advanced Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tantric practices and a meditation sādhana compiled in and around the...

 such as tummo

Tummo

Tummo is one of the methods of the Kagyu Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism used to recognize the ultimate nature of reality...

:

Fulfillment meditation includes "higher" techniques of meditation, which result in understanding of ultimate truth. But since relative and ultimate truth are two sides of the same coin, creative and fulfillment stages both lead to the same goal. Fundamentally, fulfillment meditation techniques entail the perception of emptiness in form, or the dissolution of form into emptiness: the dissolution of the creative stage vision into emptiness is technically a fulfillment stage practice. Examples of fulfillment mode yogas are dream yoga, the yoga of the mystic heat, Mahamudra meditation, the yoga of the apparitional body, the yoga of resurrection, clear light meditation, and the yoga of uniting skillful means [upaya] and perfect insight [prajna] to create the seed-essence of pure pleasure.

"Seed-essence" is a rendering of tigle and changchubsem = 'seed-essence' = yang life-force = white bodhicitta. Seed-essence (Sanskrit: bija

Bija

In Hinduism and Buddhism, the Sanskrit term बीज bīja , literally seed, is used as a metaphor for the origin or cause of things and cognate with bindu....

-tattva

Tattva

Tattva is a Sanskrit word meaning 'thatness', 'principle', 'reality' or 'truth'. According to various Indian schools of philosophy, a tattva is an element or aspect of reality conceived as an aspect of deity. Although the number of tattvas varies depending on the philosophical school, together they...

) is cognate with bindu

Bindu

Bindu is a Sanskrit term meaning "point" or "dot". The feminine case ending is bindi which denotes a small ornamental, devotional and/or mystical dot that is cosmetically applied or affixed to the forehead in Hinduism....

 (Sanskrit) and gankyil

Gankyil

The Gankyil[Tibetan:དགའ་འཁྱིལ་] is a symbol and ritual tool in Tibetan Buddhism, Bön, Himalayan Shamanism and Korean Buddhism. In Bön and Nyingma Dzogchen lineages, the Gankyil is the principal symbol and teaching tool: it is symbolic of primordial energy and represents the central unity and...

 (Tibetan).

Dowman further maps the instrumentation of "fulfillment meditation" in relation to the Mahamudra kundalini

Kundalini

Kundalini literally means coiled. In yoga, a "corporeal energy" - an unconscious, instinctive or libidinal force or Shakti, lies coiled at the base of the spine. It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as 'serpent...

 raising of the phowa

Phowa

Phowa is a Vajrayāna Buddhist meditation practice...

 of Great Transference' ("ultimate liberation") through the cranial fontanelle

Fontanelle

A fontanelle is an anatomical feature on an infant's skull.-Anatomy:Fontanelles are soft spots on a baby's head which, during birth, enable the bony plates of the skull to flex, allowing the child's head to pass through the birth canal. The ossification of the bones of the skull causes the...

 at the 'Bardo

Bardo

The Tibetan word Bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state" or "in-between state" or "liminal state". In Sanskrit the concept has the name antarabhāva...

 of Death' and a subsidiary preparatory sexual yoga:

The system of visualization vital in fulfillment meditation is that of the subtle body. This imaginary subtle body consists of psychic nerves - nadi, their focal points or energy centers - cakras; the energy that runs in the nerves - prana; and the essence of prana, known as "seed-essence" or bindu. A central channel, or nerve, runs from the sexual center to the fontanelle, and the left, rasana, and right, lalana, channels run parallel joining the central channel, the avadhuti, at the gut center. Converging from all parts of the body like physical veins, subsidiary nerves enter the central channel at the five focal points of psychic energy - the sexual, gut, heart, throat and head centers. Visualization of this system allows the yogin to manipulate the energies relating to the various centers for different mundane purposes, but the highest aim is to inject all energy into the central channel and up to the head center where ultimate liberation is achieved. The key to this system relates right and left channels to skillful means (male) and perfect insight (female) respectively, and the central channel to their union - Mahamudra. In an important sexual yoga, with or without a sexual partner, red and white seed-essence, bodhicittas, are mixed in the sexual center to rise up the central channel as kundalini. This is the yoga of uniting pure pleasure and emptiness.

Jake Dalton states that:

The perfection stage practices are often divided into those without signs (mtshan med) and those with signs (mtshan bcas). The former refer to practices in which the enlightened view is accomplished instantaneously, without any effort, “like a fish leaping out of the water.” The latter – the practices with signs – are generally the perfection stage practices known collectively as “channels and winds” (rtsa lung). Here, the practitioner works with a system of channels within one’s body, through which are moving the “winds” – subtle energies closely related to one’s mind.

Berzin frames the energetic process of the completion stage and in so doing, mentions the Clear Light

Ösel (yoga)

Ösel , the Yoga of the Clear Light Ösel (tib. hod-gsal; od gsal), the Yoga of the Clear Light Ösel (tib. hod-gsal; od gsal), the Yoga of the Clear Light (often translated as 'Radiant Light' (Sanskrit: prabhasvara), referring to the 'intrinsic purity' (Tibetan: ka-dag) of the substratum of the...

, the Illusory Body, and the Rupakaya:

On the complete stage, we cause the energy-winds (rlung, Skt. prana) to enter, abide, and dissolve in the central channel. This enables us to access the subtlest level of mental activity (clear light, ‘ od-gsal) and use it for the nonconceptual cognition of voidness – the immediate cause for the omniscient mind of a Buddha. We use the subtlest level of energy-wind, which supports clear light mental activity, to arise in the form of an illusory body (sgyu-lus) as the immediate cause for the network of form bodies (Skt. rupakaya) of a Buddha.