Questions

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

Teaching about compassion and empathy in schools can help deal with problems of climate change and environmental degradation,” says Barbara Maas, secretary,
Standing Committee for Environment and Conservation, International Buddhist Confederation (IBC). She was in New Delhi to participate in the IBC’s governing
council meeting, December 10-11, 2017. “We started an awareness campaign in the year 2005-2006 with H H The Dalai Lama when we learnt that tiger skins were
being traded in China and Tibet. At that time, I was not a Buddhist; I wrote to the Dalai Lama asking him to say that ‘this is harmful’ and he wrote back to say, “We
will stop this.” He used very strong words during the Kalachakra in 2006, when he said, ‘If he sees people wearing fur and skins, he doesn’t feel like living. ‘This sent
huge shock waves in the Himalayan community. Within six months, in Lhasa, people ripped the fur trim of their tubba, the traditional Tibetan dress.

The messenger was ideal and the audience was receptive,” says Maas who is a conservationist. She has studied the battered fox’s behavioral ecology in Serengeti, Africa. She heads the endangered species conservation at the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) International Foundation for Nature, Berlin. “I met Samdhong Rinpoche, The Karmapa, HH the Dalai Lama and Geshe Lhakdor and I thought, if by being a Buddhist, you become like this, I am going for it, “says Maas, who led the IBC initiative for including the Buddhist perspective to the global discourse on climate change by presenting the statement, ‘The Time to Act is Now: a Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change,’ at COP21 in Paris.

“It was for the first time in the history of Buddhism that leaders of different sanghas came together to take a stand on anything! The statement lists a couple of important things: the first is that we amass things that we don’t need; there is overpopulation; we need to live with contentment and deal with each other and the environment with love and compassion,” elaborates Maas. She is an ardent advocate of a vegan diet because “consuming meat and milk globally contributes more to climate change than all "transport in the world.”

Turning vegetarian or vegan usually requires complete change of perspective before one gives up eating their favorite food. What are the Buddhist ways to bring about this kind of change at the individual level? “To change our behavior, Buddhism is an ideal vehicle; it made me a more contented person,” says Maas, who grew up in Germany, as a sausage chomping, meat-loving individual. She says, “If I can change, so can anybody”.

According to the passage, what do you infer from ''The messenger was ideal and the audience was receptive''?

A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

I had seen this road many years ago when my parents moved to Mundakotukurussi, our ancestral village. However, in those early years, I hadn't begun exploring the countryside. I stored the unknown road in my head under 'One Day I Will'. Ten years ago, when I recovered from a herniated disc, it was to discover that I had a useless left leg. Though I managed to lose the limp, I hated not being able to stride around as I used to. I needed a challenge to tell myself that I wasn't going to buckle to a creature called sciatica. Thus the 'One Day I Will' arrived. "Where does the road by the medical shop lead to?" I asked my parents while visiting them next. "Chalavara," they said. "It's not an easy road to walk on," my father added. "There are too many ups and downs." Chalavara was a superior grade of a village as compared to Mundakotukurussi, with a high school, a fine library, ATMs and several shops. But it also has two approach roads. The one I had chosen was a narrow back road used by the locals and that settled it for me. I needed to know for myself I could walk a road that wasn't going to be easy. And the next day, I would get up and walk that road again.

What is 'sciatica'?

In the following question, the sentence given with blank to be filled in with an appropriate word. Select the correct alternative out of the four and indicate it by selecting the appropriate option.

Siddhartha ____________ his wife and children, and left for the mountains.

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

Decisions that profoundly _________________ not only the present __________________ succeeding generations, should not be taken in a ______________, or through one­time referendums. This is basic political common ________________. But in a voter turnout of 72.2 per cent, 51.9 per cent decided that Britain should exit the European Union (EU). The ___________________ of the Brexit vote are painfully clear.

The ___________________ of the Brexit vote are painfully clear.

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

No dice

In the following question, out of the given four alternatives, select the one which best expresses the meaning of the given word.   

Snaky

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

A brain and nervous system that are poorly developed or insufficiently nourished means low grade of ______________ in our mental processes, just as a poorly constructed or wrongly adjusted motor means loss of power in applying the electric current to its work. We will, __________, look upon the mind and the brain as counterparts of ___________ other, each performing activities which correspond to activities in the other, ________ inextricably bound together at least so far as this life is concerned, and each getting its _______________ by its union with the other. This view will lend interest to a brief study of the brain and nervous system.

Who of the following Indian vocalist and musician established the Academy of Performing Arts and Research in Switzerland?