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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 is the compassionate aspiration that the author begins with as she begins to teach?
(a) The desire to help all of her students to feel enough compassion for themselves that the students can reach Nirvana.
(b) She expresses her wish to introduce her students to ideas that will open their minds to a new kind of Buddhist thought.
(c) The wish that her students can apply the teachings to free themselves and others from suffering.
(d) The aspiration that her students enjoy their class as much as she enjoys teaching.

2. What do vajrayana Buddhists claim is inherent in emotion?
(a) The seeds of self-growth.
(b) Hope.
(c) Wisdom.
(d) Love.

3. What is the first stage of the formal practice of maitri?
(a) Engendering loving-kindness for ourselves.
(b) Closing our eyes, and taking a deep breath to relax the body.
(c) Decide that we will do no harm.
(d) Standing in the first yoga position.

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

5. Which of the following does Chodron recommend?
(a) Do not eat food that will make your mind race.
(b) Do not expect applause.
(c) Remember only positive moments from the past.
(d) Relax slowly into meditation, and it will be less strenuous on your body.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the author call "those who train wholeheartedly in awakening unconditional and relative bodhichitta"?

2. What relationship does a Buddhist teaching claim that we have had with all others?

3. What did Albert Einstein claim was an illusion?

4. Who do we first practice Maitri on?

5. What did the Buddha say about our relationship to enlightenment?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. What does the slogan "train in three difficulties" mean?

5. What are the four limitless qualities?

6. What image of maitri does Chodron use to explain the concept?

7. What are the three lords of materialism?

8. What are the qualities of maitri that are cultivated when we meditate?

9. What is tonglen?

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

(see the answer keys)

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