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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. What relationship does a Buddhist teaching claim that we have had with all others?
(a) That of a teacher and student.
(b) That of mother and child.
(c) That of an animal and owner.
(d) That of a lover.

2. What is the "foundation" of bodhichitta training?
(a) Meditation.
(b) Love.
(c) Generosity.
(d) Teaching.

3. What is the synonym for sitting mediation used by Chodron?
(a) Easy meditation.
(b) Mindfulness-awareness practice.
(c) Classic relaxation and meditation.
(d) Relaxed meditation.

4. How does Chitta translate?
(a) As relaxation.
(b) As love, heart, and affection.
(c) As mind, heart, or attitude.
(d) As mind or thought.

5. What are the four qualities of maitri?
(a) Hope, relaxation, aspiration, and generosity.
(b) Our innate talents, meditation, generosity, and kindness.
(c) Frivolity, materialism, self-absorption, and disinterest in others.
(d) Steadfastness, clear seeing, experiencing our emotional distress, and attention to the present moment..

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Chondron describe our "fundamental energy"?

2. Where does the title of the book come from?

3. What is the first stage of the formal practice of maitri?

4. What made Geshe Chekawa interested in publicizing the lojong slogans?

5. Where does Chodron write that she got her idea of what was real as she grew up in the 1950s?

Short Essay Questions

1. What do the vajrayana Buddhists believe about emotions?

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

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

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

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

6. How did the nineteenth century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggest arousing compassion?

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 image of maitri does Chodron use to explain the concept?

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

10. What aspiration is used in the practice of loving-kindness?

(see the answer keys)

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