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Transforming Confusion Into Wisdom

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Excerpt from Talk 1: “Buddha Nature and the Spiritual Friend”

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Transforming Confusion Into Wisdom

In three newly released seminars, Chogyam Trungpa presents the path for transforming confusion — chaotic emotions, ego’s games, misunderstanding our mind, the traps of samsara — into enlightened wisdom. He describes this bewilderment as not simply a personal flaw, but in fact as a key to spiritual realization.

Each of the three seminars provides a different perspective of this confusion-to-wisdom metamorphosis. Given in Montreal in 1971, the first seminar “Passion and Aggression” examines the nature of these two “poisons”, or root kleshas, which are viewed as “manure of experience” — fertile ground to work with on the Buddhist path. This seminar was also part of one of the most prolific teaching tours of Trungpa Rinpoche’s life. In the five months leading up to this seminar he traveled to 12 different cities and gave 76 unique talks on a wide range of subjects. Some of the seminars were even back-to-back in different cities, and he often gave two talks in one day. This release includes two talks and one late-night radio interview that all occurred on the same day (October 10th, 1971).

The second and third series took place a few years later in 1978, “Transforming Confusion into Wisdom” I and II in Boston and LA. These two seminars were “Advanced Training Sessions” meant for students who had some knowledge of Buddhist teachings and meditation experience. Nevertheless, in his classic accessible teaching style, Trungpa Rinpoche takes the audience through the whole journey, starting from basic Buddhist psychology and meditation. The seminars then progress to pith instructions on transforming confusion, and go on to explore vajrayana concepts including the role of the guru in this transformational process and recognizing vajra nature in oneself and the world.


Transforming Confusion Into Wisdom Playlist

Passion and Aggression (Montreal, 1971)

Transforming Confusion Into Wisdom I (Boston, 1978)

Transforming Confusion Into Wisdom II (LA, 1978)