A Vajrayana Reading List

for life-affirming practice in the general Evolving Ground ecosystem

Attendees of the weekly meditation group I host in Brooklyn have occasionally asked 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 flavor of Vajrayana that is generally pursued in Evolving Ground.

“Core” Evolving Ground Texts

If you don’t know what Evolving Ground is and would like to, I would start here. (Those who do well with audio/video could also listen to the series of Stoa talks here, which took place in the very early days of the project.)

• 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 been extremely useful to me when I was first starting (it was only published last year), and is useful to me now. Very unusual for a meditation book in the extent to which it takes a non-linear but systematic approach. More of a cookbook than a roadmap.

• Vividness, by David Chapman. A general introduction to Vajrayana and arguments for why it could be a good fit for contemporary life. Sometimes dated, in that it was begun well before Evolving Ground existed and is often trying to meme something like it into existence. But excellent, both as a description of Vajrayana and as a historical critique of the last phase of Western Buddhism. It’s the main non-practice text I recommend for people new to these ideas. (For a bit of context, David and Charlie are married.)

• Buddhism for Vampires, by David Chapman. Approaches Vajrayana and specifically shadow work (the practice of including and incorporating rejected aspects of experience) in a more playful/gruesome style, via a vampire novel and commentary. 

• Meaningness, by David Chapman. A non-religious presentation of some of the same ideas. (I’m not sure whether David would describe this book as Vajrayana or Dzogchen—I suspect he wouldn’t—but there are undeniable parallels and connections.) Specifically, provides clear and cogent 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 toward questions of meaning in life. This was the gateway for a lot of people in eG. 

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, as they get more money that way.

• 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 someone (like me) who finds it helpful to think in terms of stories and their interpretations. 

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 highly charged reading experience. A Trackless Path is also well-regarded.

• Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, by Chogyam Trungpa. Chogyam Trungpa is (rightly) a controversial figure, but his organization Shambhala was the only large-scale attempt to import Vajrayana to the United States to date, and his influence on Western Buddhism was enormous. This book was transformative for me 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 recommend. 

• 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 unstinting and bracingly direct view he calls “radical Dzogchen,” expression of which involves a great deal of paradox. Reading these books consistently alters my conscious experience in inexplicable ways, and I just like his style.

• The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, by Robert Kegan. Describes human development in terms of stages of increasingly skilled meaning-making. I’ve found it a very useful and revealing lens through which to view psychospiritual development. David Chapman has a helpful summary here. 

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 extremely 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.