Question

A) Five Wrong Livelihoods
B) Five Aggregates (skandhas, “heaps”)
C) Four Noble

Sights
D) The Four Noble Truths
E) Noble Eightfold Path

2.

In the traditional biography of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), one of the practices in which he engaged after the Great Renunciation was

A) hedonism
B) academic study at a local university
C) good works in the form of poverty relief
D) asceticism (mortifying the flesh)
E) performing religious rituals

3.

Among other things, the deity Kali represents

A) sexual beauty
B) the power of the masculine principle
C) Bhakti Yoga
D) the fact that we, and all other things, will die and transform
E) charity and kindness

4.

In the traditional biography of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), a major activity during his life after becoming enlightened was

A) wandering the forests alone, enjoying the bliss of enlightenment
B) relaxing and playing music with friends
C) teaching, mentoring, and counseling
D) serving as an advisor at the court of kings and other rulers
E) writing theological essays

5.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna’s chariot driver persuades Arjuna to

A) fight for the purpose of upholding the honor of his family
B) strive to create an ideal society by winning the battle
C) devote his life to the literary arts as a means of understanding Brahman
D) do his duty and fight
E) renounce worldly affairs and abandon the battlefield

6.

Which type of meditation became the mainstay of most forms of Buddhist practice?

A) vivid dreaming while asleep
B) insight meditation
C) deep-trance (jhana) meditation
D) heart rhythm meditation
E) hypnosis

7.

The term tanha in the second of the Noble Truths indicates

A) attachment to social norms and hierarchies
B) samsara, the cycle of reincarnation
C) desires for personal or private gain
D) a desire for enlightenment
E) the totality of our desires

8.

According to the Buddhist Eightfold Path, which of the following would be a concrete example of “right mindfulness”?

A) singing a Buddhist-themed song
B) endeavoring to follow the example of the Buddha
C) devoting one’s life to charitable work
D) using meditation to become aware of one’s mental and psychological states
E) reading Buddhist theological texts or sutras (suttas)

9.

In Buddhist theory, the Five Heaps (skandhas) explain

A) how we might enter nirvana
B) how and why things really exist independently, in and of themselves
C) how we came to have a sense of “I” or “me” as an individual self
D) why the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) chose the Middle Path
E) the usefulness of skillful means

10.

A common—but misguided and ineffective—way of dealing with our desires is

A) to strive to understand them
B) endeavoring to stop harmful thoughts and sensations from arising within us
C) meditation
D) to strive to eliminate inappropriate ones
E) to strive to satisfy them

11.

In the ideas of later Hinduism

A) the one correct way to attain liberation is by detachment from society
B) visual depictions of the divine are not appropriate because they are too limited
C) the only correct way to attain liberation is by devoting one’s self wholeheartedly to a deity
D) the single correct way to attain liberation is by karma (action) yoga
E) a divine essence permeates everything in the universe

12.

Kumbha Mela

A) is a spring festival in which people frolic around a bonfire
B) celebrates the triumph of light over darkness
C) is the largest gathering of people in the world
D) is a spoken sound that facilitates spiritual transformation
E) takes place at a sacred mountain once every 5 years

13.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Bhakti Yoga refers to

A) single-minded action
B) scrupulous performance of religious rituals
C) devotion to a personal god
D) daily meditation
E) the discovery of knowledge within one’s self

14.

In the traditional biography of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), his first profound meditative experience took place while

A) seated under an apple tree watching a farmer plowing a distant field
B) roaming the splendid gardens of his father’s palace
C) dreaming of a white elephant
D) swimming in the Ganges River
E) collapsing from self-imposed starvation

15.

If life is infused with a variety of types of suffering, the key to eliminating this suffering is to

A) stop grasping at pleasures and self-interested desires
B) attain high social status to ensure a better rebirth
C) satisfy the full range of our desires
D) take life easy, avoid stress, and stop worrying
E) use the power of one’s will to eliminate all desires through asceticism (mortifying the flesh)

16.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna could both do his social duty and reduce worldly attachments by

A) performing Hatha yoga, the yoga of effort
B) fighting hard in battle without concern for the results of that fighting
C) single-minded devotion to a deity
D) single-minded devotion to the performance of religious rituals
E) discovering liberating knowledge within nature

17.

The Three Jewels (or Three Treasures) of Buddhism are

A) the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha
B) Precepts, Meditation, and Skillful Means
C) Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana
D) impermanence, no-self, suffering (dukkha)
E) compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity

18.

In typical practice, most Hindus

A) fast, expose themselves to the elements, lay on beds of nails and otherwise mortify their flesh
B) devote themselves to three deities
C) pay little or no attention to deities because meditation does not require doing so
D) consume beef at communal feasts to affirm community bonds
E) devote themselves to a single deity

19.

The most fundamental issue in early Buddhism was

A) suffering
B) living a morally upright life
C) the nature of the supreme deity
D) the way(s) in which Buddhism differed from Hinduism
E) the proper role of mortifying the flesh through rigorous ordeals

20.

In the Buddhist Eightfold Path, one component of “right view” (or “right understanding”) is to know that

A) the deities (devas) are ready to help those who reach out to them
B) we sometimes encounter suffering in the course of human life
C) the ends never justify the means
D) each person possesses a soul or essence that will be reincarnated unless the person enters nirvana
E) the world is a constant flux of conditioned phenomena

 

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