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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The author suggests that the reader check out the enlightenment scene in which film in order to get an idea of the vibrancy of the experience?
(a) Little Buddha.
(b) Shaolin.
(c) Holy Smoke.
(d) Kundun.

2. The author states that what feeling is linked to our modern environmental mismatch?
(a) Pride.
(b) Rage.
(c) Shame.
(d) Painful self-consciousness.

3. What kind of benefits does the author describe self-delusion as harboring?
(a) Evolutionary.
(b) Personal.
(c) Darwinian.
(d) Intellectual.

4. How did the author feel when his meditation teacher told him that his frustration with meditation was a good sign?
(a) Assured.
(b) Patronized.
(c) Ashamed.
(d) Proud.

5. How many parts belong to the Path that "deeply committed Buddhists are supposed to tread" (48)?
(a) Three.
(b) Eight.
(c) Six.
(d) Four.

6. What Rolling Stones song does the author say perfectly encapsulates the human condition from the Buddhist point of view?
(a) Salt of the Earth.
(b) You Can't Always Get What You Want.
(c) I Can't Get No Satisfaction.
(d) Gimme Shelter.

7. What do psychologists call the network in the brain that is active when people are not doing anything in particular?
(a) Rational distortion network.
(b) The temporal lobe.
(c) The aggregate self.
(d) The default mode network.

8. What experiments are said to have "powerfully demonstrated the capacity of the conscious self to convince itself that it is calling the shots when it is not" (79)?
(a) Colostrum experiments.
(b) Dual-self experiments.
(c) Corpus callosum experiments.
(d) Split-brain experiments.

9. What is the one thing that the author says natural selection "cares about" (3)?
(a) Survival.
(b) Evolution.
(c) Sustenance.
(d) Procreation.

10. The author states that natural selection does not want people to be happy, but instead wants them to be what?
(a) Tenacious.
(b) Healthy.
(c) Compassionate.
(d) Productive.

11. The author presents a scenario wherein someone imagines his or her speech is going to go badly, but it goes fine. What term does the author give to this phenomenon?
(a) A conundrum.
(b) A metta experience.
(c) A triumph.
(d) A false positive.

12. When ancient Buddhist writings mention the term sati, what does the word mean in English?
(a) Peace.
(b) Tranquility.
(c) Stillness.
(d) Mindfulness.

13. Whom does the author name as the two people who would be on the highest end of the spectrum as far as ease of meditation goes?
(a) The Dalai Lama and Bob Ross.
(b) The Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi.
(c) Mister Rogers and Bob Ross.
(d) The Dalai Lama and Mister Rogers.

14. What adverb is used to describe briefly exposing someone to a word or an image, but not long enough for conscious awareness to set in?
(a) Subdermally.
(b) Multilingually.
(c) Undertemporally.
(d) Subliminally.

15. What is NOT listed among the traditional practices of Asian Buddhists not practiced by Western Buddhists?
(a) Meditation.
(b) Belief in a variety of deities.
(c) Belief in reincarnation.
(d) Fixation on bodily fluids during meditative practice.

Short Answer Questions

1. What types of insects were making noise outside of the author's window on the fifth night of his first meditation retreat?

2. The author uses the example of his childhood experiences with the Tooth Fairy in order to demonstrate what concept?

3. When scientists conducted an experiment asking people to choose one of four identical pairs of pantyhose, which one did they most often choose?

4. What is the meaning of the term metta?

5. The idea within vipassana meditation is to see the true nature of what?

(see the answer keys)

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