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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which answer completes the following quote? "If this process of clear seeing isn't based on self-compassion it will become a process of ______."
(a) Losing patience.
(b) Heartbreak.
(c) Self-aggression.
(d) Increased tension.

2. What did the nineteenth century yogi Patrul Rinpiche suggest we do to train in compassion?
(a) Actively listen to others, and imagine how they must feel.
(b) Try not to hurt others, but do not go out of your way to give when there is no hope of them being kind.
(c) Understand that your problems are not the only ones in the world, and try to help those who are less fortunate.
(d) Imagine beings in torment, and put yourself in their place.

3. What helps teach us the four qualities of maitri?
(a) Sitting meditation.
(b) Hurt.
(c) Lessons from our past experience.
(d) Anger.

4. What does Chodron claim is our relationship to reaching out to others?
(a) She writes that this is our natural inclination.
(b) She argues that there is no point in trying to do this.
(c) She claims that this is always hard work, and never natural for us.
(d) She writes that we can do it only with great effort.

5. What does Chodron warn that we become habituated to doing?
(a) "By trying to please others, we can gain relief from the pressures we create for ourselves, but become so used to it that we lose our sense of what we want in life."
(b) "Reaching for something to ease the edginess of the moment."
(c) "As we look for comfort, we slowly slip into addictive behaviors that can destroy our lives."
(d) "Losing ourselves more and more, not even as we consider ourselves separate from others, but because we do this."

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Chodron believe that the teaching of the three marks of existence can motivate us to do?

2. What does the author claim is the gift of understanding that uncertainty is part of life?

3. What are the three lords of materialism?

4. What does tonglen literally mean?

5. What does Chodron claim is the most difficult step in any practice?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the role of interconnectedness in the kind of training that Chodron proposes?

2. Under what conditions does the author claim that people can "train" to be a warrior?

3. Why does Chodron describe the experience of a young woman who was in a foreign country, surrounded by people throwing stones at her?

4. What does the Buddhist teaching tell us that all other beings have been over the course of many lifetimes?

5. What does "of the two witnesses, hold the principal one" mean?

6. What are the three lords of materialism?

7. Why does Pema Chodron argue that most of us sow the seeds of our own suffering?

8. What does Chodron write is the "foundation" of bodhichitta training?

9. Why does Chodron mention a walled, protected community in Florida?

10. What ways does Chodron write that meditation can be misused?

(see the answer keys)

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