Ngondro's inner set of four accumulation practices is taught with a specific internal logic, each addressing a different obstacle in sequence rather than being four interchangeable ways of building merit. Refuge with prostrations, performed together and generally counted first, establishes the practitioner's formal connection to the teacher, the teaching and the community while the physical act of repeated prostration is understood to work directly against pride, a quality the tradition treats as a significant obstacle to receiving instruction honestly. Vajrasattva practice, centred on the recitation of a hundred-syllable mantra associated with the buddha Vajrasattva, follows as a purification practice aimed specifically at negative past actions and their karmic residue, addressed before the practitioner moves on to practices of accumulation rather than purification. The mandala offering then builds generosity and loosens attachment through the offering of an entire visualised universe, and guru yoga, generally placed last, cultivates devotion to the teacher understood as inseparable from the enlightened qualities the entire path is oriented toward, making it the practice that most directly prepares a student for the closer teacher-student relationship the higher tantric teachings require.
Retreat centres running structured ngondro programmes in the West, now common wherever Tibetan Buddhist teachers have established communities outside Asia, generally teach all four in this order and track a student's progress through the accumulations individually, treating the sequence itself, not merely the total count reached, as part of what the preliminaries are training.