Rafting Towards Relinquishment

It's been a long time since I've really considered tantric practices, so this little diversion has been interesting. And I remember why I never really pursued them...they strongly resemble the magical practices of the occult Western tradition, which I did in my early 20s, and decided to ultimately leave behind because invocations and traversing the Paths of the Tree of Life and the Greater Rite of the Hexagram seemed to be no more or less effective than just paying attention to my breath in simple, boring old ānāpānasati or zazen.

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I think most people with a basic understanding of Buddhist philosophy also have a basic intellectual grasp of the concept of "emptiness", one of the central concepts in Mahāyāna: All things in the Universe only exist in relation to other things, and are therefore empty of any inherent self-existence or essence. A great deal of the practice in Mahāyāna meditation systems, like Zen or Tantra, are primarily concerned with bringing that realization to the practitioner on a concrete, intuitive and emotional level, beyond the mere intellectual understanding. There's usually some additional stuff thrown in there about one's own true nature being empty.

This teaching of emptiness is building on the earliest teachings of the tilakkhaṇa, the "three marks" of all conditioned things: anicca (impermanence or transience or instability), anatta (lacking a separate, inherent existence), and dukkha (unsatisfactory, and will bring suffering if clung to). So why did that get expanded into the doctrine of emptiness? Because the abhidhammists took their work way too seriously.
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