Over a dozen fresh online stories from the new issue of Mandala are waiting for you!

Here are a few highlights:

Lama Yeshe with Ven. Karin Valham, Lama Lhundrup, Lama Pasang and Kopan monks at a picnic in Bhalaju, Kathmandu Valley, 1976. Photo courtesy of Ven. Karin Valham.

In our continuing “Road to Kopan” series, Ven. Karin Valham describes her first Kopan course in November 1974: “Rinpoche’s and Lama’s teaching instantly became very personal. I was sitting way at the back having come late, and I was thinking they were talking to me, describing my life problems and giving me advice how to solve them by practicing Dharma. Lama Yeshe’s loving kindness helped us believe in ourselves and our potential as human beings. When he talked about ‘the fantasy projection of our dualistic mind,’ I knew exactly what he meant. I had found what I was looking for ‒ the Dharma ‒ and I wanted to become more like Rinpoche and Lama.”

Khensur Jampa Tegchok Rinpoche explains the simile of a cloud from the Diamond Cutter Sutra in an excerpt from the forthcoming book Insight into Emptiness. And we talk to the book’s editor, Ven. Thubten Chodron, in the first edition of our podcast “Mandala Talk.”

Maitripa College’s Jim Blumenthal introduces us to the 17 Pandits of Nalanda Monastery. “His Holiness the Dalai Lama frequently refers to himself as a follower of the lineage of the seventeen Nalanda masters today,” Blumenthal writes. Find out who these masters are and how they are connected to the development of Tibetan Buddhism.

Sarah Shifferd takes the path into the world of online dating. “An online dating profile is a window into a mind and a life. It can be a work of art, a brash advertisement, a dispassionate report. First and foremost, it is a marketing tool for the self,” Shifferd writes. “My online dating practice threw me right into the deep end of the wisdom pool: describe this self accurately and even intriguingly, without becoming trapped in some notion of its inherent solidity.”