A Vajrayana Reading List

for life-affirming practice in the general Evolving Ground ecosystem

Attendees of the weekly meditation group I host in Brooklyn sometimes ask me for reading recommendations, so I put together this loose canon. I hope it will be useful to those looking to survey the landscape of contemporary Vajrayana Buddhism, especially the unique flavor of Vajrayana that is happening in Evolving Ground.

“Core” Evolving Ground Texts

(If you don’t know what Evolving Ground is, start here.)

• Opening Awareness: A Guide to Finding Vividness in Spacious Clarity, by Charlie Awbery. A primer on Evolving Ground’s foundational meditation practice, which is derived from the Tibetan Buddhist practice shi-ne. This would have saved me at least a year of trial and error if it had been available when I first started meditating. It’s the only practice book I know that takes an approach both systematic and non-linear—more like a cookbook than a roadmap. There should be more like it.

• Vividness, by David Chapman. A general introduction to Vajrayana and arguments for why it’s a good fit for contemporary circumstances. David started this project well before Evolving Ground existed, and you can read it as an attempt to meme something like it into existence (which worked). Excellent both as a description of Vajrayana and as a critique of the last phase of Western Buddhism, which he calls “consensus Buddhism.” It’s the main non-practice text I recommend for people new to these ideas. (For context, David and Charlie are married.)

• Buddhism for Vampires, by David Chapman. Approaches Vajrayana and specifically shadow work (the practice of working with and integrating rejected aspects of experience) in a playful and gory style, via a vampire novel and commentary. 

• Meaningness, by David Chapman. A non-religious presentation of some of the same ideas. Meaningness gives clear, accessible arguments for why nihilism (“nothing really matters”) and eternalism (“there is a single fixed truth”) are inaccurate and unsustainable, and outlines better ways of orienting around questions of meaning and purpose. The way we think about these things is badly broken, and this book explains how and what to do about it. I predict people will be reading it generations from now.

Aro gTer Books

Charlie Awbery and David Chapman both studied under Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche and Khandro Dechen, a married couple from Wales who are formal lineage-holders in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. NCR and KD tend to describe Vajrayana in poetic and playful language. I think they’re wonderful writers. Other people find them baffling and unnecessarily opaque, and that’s kind of also true.

(Pronunciation note: “Ngakpa” is pronounced “knock-pa,” the g is silent. Similarly, “gTer” rhymes with “bear.”)

I suggest ordering these directly from the Aro gTer’s website.

• Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen. A general introduction to Dzogchen and the Aro gTer’s foundational sitting practices, which were the basis for Evolving Ground’s Opening Awareness and Moving Awareness practices.

• Spectrum of Ecstasy: The Five Wisdom Emotions According to Vajrayana Buddhism. A book about the tantric approach of “taking emotions as the path.” Explores Vajrayana’s elemental system as a framework for understanding emotions, and introduces Dzogchen trek-chöd, a practice for liberating emotional energy from fixed patterns. Often a natural thing to explore after establishing some familiarity with Opening Awareness. Reading groups for this text run regularly in the Evolving Ground Discord (which can be joined here).

• Entering the Heart of the Sun and Moon. A book about bringing Vajrayana into committed romantic relationships (can also be powerful for people outside of those). Perhaps the most beautiful of the Aro gTer books.

• Wisdom Eccentrics. Dialogues between Ngakpa Chogyam and his teacher Künzang Dorje Rinpoche. Great if you’re like me and find it helpful to think in terms of story.

There’s quite a lot more of these. Full list here. You can also watch an endearing interview with NCR and KD on the Guru Viking podcast here. 

Outer Canon

• The Magic of Vajrayana, by Ken McLeod. A practice guide for Vajrayana, exploring prayer and yidam practice. Artful, deep, and a charged reading experience. A Trackless Path is also well-regarded.

• Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, by Chogyam Trungpa. Chogyam Trungpa is rightly controversial for disturbing reasons you can find by googling. At the same time, his organization Shambhala was the only large-scale attempt to import Vajrayana to the United States to date, and his contribution to Western Buddhism was enormous. This book was transformative when I read it years ago, and some of its images continue to shape my practice. I have not read Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism but it’s the other main Trungpa book people talk about. 

• The Dzogchen View, Dzogchen Non-Meditation, and Original Perfection, by Keith Dowman. These are picked somewhat randomly from his many books. Dowman translates and gives lucid commentary on core Dzogchen texts. He favors an bracingly direct view he calls “radical Dzogchen,” expression of which involves a lot of seemingly paradoxical statements. Reading these books consistently alters my conscious experience in ineffable ways, and I just think his style is cool.

• The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, by Robert Kegan. Describes human development in terms of stages of increasingly skilled meaning-making. It has become one of the primary lenses I use for thinking about how people grow and where they get stuck. David Chapman’s summary here is a great starting point. 

Other Potent and Potentially Pertinent Psychophysical Paths

• The Option Method. I consider this view highly consonant with Dzogchen—almost like its homegrown American form. It’s worked symbiotically with my engagement with Vajrayana. There were no very good introductions, so I wrote one, called “How to Be Happy.” That includes further links at the bottom of the page. 

• Focusing. An intuitive and easy-to-learn system for psychophysical exploration, based on research at the University of Chicago into what made therapy “work” for some people and not others. The main text is Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing. I’ve also heard good things about Ann Weiser Cornell’s The Power of Focusing. Focusing can be a great doorway to the larger field of somatic inquiry, i.e., feeling feelings in your body.

• Internal Family Systems. A slightly more scaffolded system that emphasizes viewing the emotional system in terms of separable interrelating parts, and facilitating non-coercive conversation and mediation between those parts. One very accessible introduction geared toward solo application is Jay Earley’s Self-Therapy.

• Existential Kink, by Carolyn Elliott. Quite a few people in and around eG have liked this book and recommended it to me. I still haven’t read it, but just knowing about the view it espouses (as one way of viewing stuck psychological patterns) has been occasionally very helpful. Here’s a post by Sasha Chapin that will give you a sense. 

Resonant Blogs

• Vajrayana Now, by Charlie Awbery. (Charlie’s experiential notes comparing sutric and tantric meditation were instrumental to redirecting my approach to meditation.) Also see Charlie’s Dzogchen reading list, which has more historical texts than the one you’re reading.

• Meaningness, David Chapman’s Substack. Currently exploring the topic of meta-rationality.

• Further Vision, by Ari Nielsen. Ari is an experienced practitioner, a dynamo of inexhaustible activity, and one of my favorite explainers of spiritual concepts.

• Alexander Vezhnevets. Lucid essays on aspects of Dzogchen meditation by an AI scientist who is also a coachee of Charlie’s.

Finally, this here blog you’re reading tends to engage topics/rambles from a Vajrayana-inspired view, and sometimes explicitly discusses Vajrayana practices and concepts. For more of that, you can subscribe below.