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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the main point of the formal practice of maitri?

2. What does the author compare to an elderly couple living in a protected community in Florida?

3. What are the four qualities of maitri?

4. Which answer completes the following quote? "If this process of clear seeing isn't based on self-compassion it will become a process of ______."

5. What does Chodron claim is our relationship to reaching out to others?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Chodron, what is our relationship with enlightenment?

2. What are the stages of the formal practice of tonglen?

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 ways does Chodron write that meditation can be misused?

5. Why does the author include an anecdote about finding her boyfriend "passionately embracing another woman"?

6. What is tonglen?

7. Chodron asserts that there are two options in life. The first is "to grow up and relate to life directly." What is the second?

8. What are the four limitless qualities?

9. What does Chodron compare to "tapping into a spring of living water that has been temporarily encased in solid rock"?

10. What are the three principles that the Buddha taught to be characteristic of human existence?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What does Chodron mean when she says to do no harm? How is this beneficial? What makes it difficult?

Essay Topic 2

According to Chodron, there are five strengths. What are these? Why are they important for her?

Essay Topic 3

What does the author compare our fears in life to? What analogy does she make? Do you think this is an effective analogy? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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