
The Skillful Means and Wisdom Seminar
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In 1976, students of Chögyam Trungpa in Northern California invited him to teach a six-week program at the Berkeley Dharmadhatu, which was what the city centers that Trungpa Rinpoche started were called in those early days. This intensive was a particularly special chance for teacher and students to be together for such an extended period. It was also especially precious for members of the local community in California, who had few such opportunities.
The title and overall topic of the seminar, skillful means and wisdom, refers to two complementary components of the Buddhist path. Traditionally, skillful means encompasses the methods and actions that a practitioner employs to travel on the path; and wisdom is the understanding, knowledge, and insight that the student achieves in their practice and study. In this seminar, Chögyam Trungpa challenges simplistic assumptions about what skillful means and wisdom are, showing how they interpenetrate every aspect of our experience as practitioners. The seminar is a contemplation on these two concepts, rich in metaphor and imagery.

In this series of eighteen succinct talks, Trungpa Rinpoche takes us on a journey of skillful means and wisdom through the three yanas, or stages, of Tibetan Buddhism. There are five talks on hinayana, the path of individual liberation; seven on mahayana, or the bodhisattva’s path of compassion and wisdom; and six on vajrayana, or the diamond path of tantric liberation.

The First “Advanced Training Session”
For this seminar, the Berkeley Dharmadhatu developed a three-part format for the program, which they called an “Advanced Training Session”, or ATS. The three parts to this ATS were:
- First, there was a preliminary study program. This included discussion of readings from Chögyam Trungpa’s books Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, The Myth of Freedom, and other books.
- Second, there was a four-week program in Berkeley, during which Trungpa Rinpoche gave three evening talks a week for four weeks on skillful means and wisdom from the hinayana and mahayana perspectives. In addition to the talks, there was meditation practice, discussion groups, and parties on the weekends.
- Third, the ATS finished with a ten-day residential program at a facility in the rugged and beautiful mountains near Santa Cruz, California. Participants slept in bunk beds and practiced meditation together all day. Trungpa Rinpoche gave talks in the evenings. It was here that Rinpoche gave talks on skillful means and wisdom on the more advanced vajrayana path.
A Visit from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The ATS was scheduled to follw the visit of His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, a revered teacher of the Nyingma Lineage, and one of Trungpa Rinpoche’s personal gurus. His Holiness had already visited New York, Vermont, Boulder, and Berkeley, and Trungpa Rinpoche was in continual contact with him. While in Northern California, Khyentse Rinpoche spent several days at the home of Lady Diana Mukpo, the wife of Trungpa Rinpoche. Diana was living in California for an extended period of time, while studying dressage with an accomplished teacher.
While staying with Lady Diana, Khyentse Rinpoche had a dream in which he recognized Trungpa Rinpoche and Diana’s three-year-old son, Gesar Mukpo, as the reincarnation of Jamgon Kongtrul of Shechen, Trungpa Rinpoche’s main teacher, or root guru. You can read about this time from Diana Mukpo’s perspective in her book, Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa.

His Holiness enthroned Gesar as Jamgon Kongtrul at the Berkeley Dharmadhatu the morning of the first day of the Skillful Means and Wisdom seminar, which began that evening. Chögyam Trungpa also gave a weekend program on the theme of “Empowerment” during the ATS. (These recordings are not available yet, but will be included in a future release!)

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was a very powerful, realized human being. His presence laid the ground for the environment in which the ATS would take place. There was a feeling throughout his visit that His Holiness had further confirmed, empowered, and inspired Trungpa Rinpoche in his work with Western students. And we the students were reaping the benefit. Whenever either Khyentse Rinpoche or Trungpa Rinpoche walked into the room to teach, the environment was electric.

A Cultural Turning Point
Also of historical note, it was during his four-week stay in Berkeley that Trungpa Rinpoche firmly established formal service in his household. He had experimented with it in New York earlier in the year. Later that year, he moved into a new house in Boulder that would become the first residence that was called the “Kalapa Court,” where formal service would become part of the environment. However, it was in Berkeley that Rinpoche first took formal service to its full manifestation. Diana Mukpo, who was living outside of Berkeley in Lafayette, California, describes taking her dressage teacher, Charles de Kunffy, to dinner at Rinpoche’s household in Berkeley during this time:
“We sat down to a lavish meal in the dining room. There was an exquisite linen tablecloth and beautiful linen napkins, and the food was served on the very nice Lenox china that was on loan. In the middle of the table was a large ornate silver candelabra. There were five or six servers, who served each course, kept the wine flowing, and cleared our plates from one course to the next. Charles couldn’t believe that Rinpoche ate like this every night. I couldn’t believe it either, but I didn’t let on that this was any different than a typical night in our household had ever been.”
From Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Page 210. (Shambhala Publications)
One other historical reference point: This ATS was held in May and June of 1976. In October of that year, Trungpa Rinpoche began to present the Shambhala teachings and to plan for the introduction of Shambhala Training, a program of secular instruction in meditation. This was a pregnant time indeed, and Rinpoche was right on the cusp of a major transition in his life.
Visual Transmission
It is very fortunate that these talks were recorded on videotape and we have a visual record. There is a quality of transmission in these talks that is beyond the words. This quality is very direct but also not graspable conceptually. It really helps to be able to see him. In fact, Chögyam Trungpa’s teaching style throughout this Advanced Training Session is in part to frustrate our attempts to “grasp” the teachings conceptually just so that direct transmission can get through. Please don’t worry if you don’t think you are getting it intellectually. The teaching is not just in what he says. “Watching” and hearing these teachings is an incredibly rich experience. It is seeing a realized being at the top of his game, if I could speak in such terms.
A further note on the video recordings: Starting in 1974, with the opening of Naropa Institute (now University), a number of Rinpoche’s students had begun videotaping his seminars at Naropa as well as a number of teachings in Boulder, Colorado. The video team had acquired what was then called a “portable” video camera. It was huge and heavy, but a strong videographer could carry it from one location to the next.
This video recorder used tapes that only recorded about half an hour of material; then, the technician had to change the tape. Trungpa Rinpoche knew this, but he didn’t have anyone giving him a signal when the tape was close to running out or needed to be changed. Somehow, however, he gave talks that lasted in almost all cases less than thirty minutes. These shorter than usual lectures are part of the power and charm of this seminar. Additionally, this makes it an excellent introductory series for new practitioners, in part because of the accessible length of the talks. The series introduces many basic and also some advanced topics, with a unique take on them all.
Altogether, Skillful Means and Wisdom is a window into life on the edge of the Buddhist frontier in the 1970s. There are very few video recordings of Rinpoche teaching in dharmadhatus. This is one of the best!
Skillful Means and Wisdom Playlist (1976, Video.)
Part 1: Hinayana (Berkeley, California)
- Talk 1: Deception
- Talk 2: Skillful Means Comes from the Echo
- Talk 3: Renunciation
- Talk 4: Sitting Meditation
- Talk 5: Meditation in Action
Part 2: Mahayana (Berkeley, California)
- Talk 6: Introduction to Mahayana Vision
- Talk 7: Transplanting Bodhichitta
- Talk 8: “Far-Gone” Practices and Generosity
- Talk 9: Discipline and Patience
- Talk 10: Exertion and Meditation
- Talk 11: Prajna
- Talk 12: Vajra-like Samadhi
Part 3: Vajrayana (Soquel, California)
- Talk 13: Space
- Talk 14: Mandala
- Talk 15: Devotion
- Talk 16: Samaya
- Talk 17: Vajra Sangha
- Talk 18: Skillful Means and Wisdom
- Full Seminar Playlist
Learn More:
Moh Hardin, a senior student and teacher, wrote the excellent study guide for the Skillful Means and Wisdom seminar:
Sources:
- Diana J. Mukpo with Carolyn Rose Gimian. 2008. Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boulder: Shambhala Publications.
- Hardin, Moh. 2010. Skillful Means and Wisdom On the Buddhist Path Study Guide. Halifax: Kalapa Recordings.