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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What are the lojong teachings for?
(a) Seeking spiritual guidance.
(b) Training the mind.
(c) Finding a good feeling.
(d) Opening the heart.

2. What does Chodron claim we cultivate through making aspirations?
(a) Bravery.
(b) Hope.
(c) Worldly ambition.
(d) Good health.

3. What does Chodron warn that we become habituated to doing?
(a) "Reaching for something to ease the edginess of the moment."
(b) "Losing ourselves more and more, not even as we consider ourselves separate from others, but because we do this."
(c) "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."
(d) "As we look for comfort, we slowly slip into addictive behaviors that can destroy our lives."

4. What does the author claim that lojong slogans or the slogans of Atisha can help us do?
(a) Become a true warrior.
(b) Learn to meditate in less time than any other method.
(c) Understand the nature of love.
(d) Remember wisdom at emotional moments.

5. What insight did the woman give whom the author mentions is constantly on a diet?
(a) Some addictions are widely considered healthy.
(b) Addictions are divided along gender lines.
(c) Addictions temporarily relieve suffering.
(d) All addictions address the same emotional needs.

6. What is the main point of the formal practice of maitri?
(a) To uncover the ability to love without bias.
(b) To give up our independence to join a community.
(c) To withdraw from the noise of our daily lives.
(d) To love freely and ask nothing in return.

7. What does the author recommend that we do with our sorrow?
(a) Sit with it.
(b) Master it in order to eliminate it.
(c) Try to change it.
(d) Fully focus on it in order to verbalize it.

8. How does Chodron suggest we cultivate bravery?
(a) By trying new things.
(b) Through affirmations.
(c) Through conversations with spiritual teachers.
(d) Through aspirations.

9. Where does Chodron write that she got her idea of what was real as she grew up in the 1950s?
(a) School.
(b) Television.
(c) Church.
(d) Her family.

10. What is Maitri?
(a) Full relaxation.
(b) A Tibetan term for hope.
(c) Acceptance of ourselves.
(d) Deep breath.

11. What advice did the author receive as a six year old?
(a) Not to listen to advice.
(b) To care for others in order to make her own life smoother.
(c) Not to let life harden her heart.
(d) To have a clear mind by avoiding spicy foods.

12. 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) Heartbreak.
(b) Self-aggression.
(c) Losing patience.
(d) Increased tension.

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

14. According to Chodron, what two things do all those who set out on this path discover that we all have?
(a) Difficulty in life and diminished hope for the future.
(b) Anxiety and attention problems.
(c) Changing emotions and difficulty focusing.
(d) Neurosis and wisdom.

15. What hope does Chodron write that we should abandon?
(a) Hope of growth.
(b) Hope of fruition.
(c) Hope of change.
(d) Hope of earning love.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do vajrayana Buddhists claim is inherent in emotion?

2. What does the author experience after finding her boyfriend "passionately embracing" another woman?

3. Which of the following does Chodron recommend?

4. What does the author claim "cannot proliferate" without our thoughts?

5. How does the author characterize meditation?

(see the answer keys)

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