The Sermon at Benares · Class 10 English · First Flight: 135 MCQs with answers

Siddhartha Gautama

He was a prince of that name in northern India.

He was sent away for schooling in the Hindu sacred scriptures

He returned four years later to marry.

He went out into the world to seek enlightenment

The sights so moved him that he went at once, and his wife and son are not mentioned again.

He renamed it the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of Wisdom

It had been an ordinary peepal tree until then.

The Awakened, or the Enlightened

It is a description of what happened to him, not a family name.

A religious or moral talk

The textbook's opening activity also asks whether the word can be used lightly or as a joke.

A king riding to war

The fourth sight is a monk begging for alms.

Enlightenment

It is what the Prince went out into the world to seek.

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Her only son had died

The word 'only' is doing a great deal of work in that sentence.

She carried the dead child from neighbour to neighbour asking for medicine

The picture is deliberately painful, and it shows that her grief is refusal rather than sadness.

Sakyamuni, the Buddha

Sakyamuni is another name for the Buddha.

A handful of mustard-seed

The commonest thing in any kitchen, which is why the task looked easy.

To obtain

It is used of her promise to get the mustard seed.

At the wayside, weary and hopeless

She has not been contradicted or comforted; she has simply run out of doors.

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Troubled and brief and combined with pain

The opening sentence sets the terms of the whole argument.

Both young and adult, both the foolish and the wise

Age does not exempt, and neither does wisdom.

It means affected by suffering, disease or pain, as the world is by death

The world, the sermon says, is afflicted with death and decay.

She went to the Buddha

It is a stylistic, old-fashioned use of the verb.

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He lived from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C., that is, for eighty years in all

The dates are given at the very start of the chapter, before anything else about him.

He and the princess had a son and lived ten years as befitted royalty

The whole of that settled life is given in a single sentence, because what interrupts it is the subject.

He chanced upon them while out hunting, having been shielded from suffering till then

'Chanced upon' means came across by chance, and 'heretofore shielded' explains why they struck him so hard.

A sick man, an aged man, a funeral procession, a monk begging for alms

The monk comes last, after the three sufferings, which is why the order matters.

He wandered for seven years, and not one incident of those years is described

Only the length of the search is given, which suggests that the length is what mattered.

To stay there until enlightenment came

It is the turning point: he stops searching outward and makes a promise to himself.

He vowed to stay until enlightenment came, and it came after seven days

Seven years belong to the wandering; the seven days belong to the tree.

He called it the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of Wisdom, for what had happened beneath it

Like 'Buddha' itself, the name is a description of an event rather than a title.

He began to teach and to share his new understandings

The knowledge is not kept; teaching begins at once.

It was Benares, the holiest of the bathing places along the Ganges

'Dipping places' means bathing places, and that sermon is the one preserved in this chapter.

Bathing places on the river

Benares is described as the most holy of them on the Ganges.

Sakyamuni

'Go to Sakyamuni, the Buddha,' says the man who cannot help her himself.

1 and 2 only

They had a son and lived ten years as befitted royalty before he left.

Something which cannot be understood

The chapter uses it of the kind of suffering the sermon addresses.

He wandered for seven years and was enlightened after seven days under the tree

The tree was also still a peepal tree until after the enlightenment.

Siddhartha Gautama was his birth name, and Buddha a description he earned

Bodhi is the name of the tree; Sakyamuni is another name for the Buddha himself.

A prince shielded for twenty-five years saw sickness, age and death in one afternoon, and never went home

A good opening puts the protection and its ending together, because that is what the section is about.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include at least six of: birth as a prince, Siddhartha Gautama, northern India, 563–483 B.C.; schooling at twelve in the Hindu sacred scriptures; marriage four years later and a son; ten years as befitted royalty; being heretofore shielded from suffering; the hunt a…

'She has gone out of her mind — the boy is dead.'

They are not cruel; they are stating a fact she cannot accept.

The medicine that would cure her boy

Nothing in her request has changed — she still believes a cure exists.

The seed must come from a house where no child, husband, parent or friend had died

In one sentence a simple errand becomes an impossible one.

In her joy she promised to procure the seed

The joy is the point: she believes she has been given a cure at last.

Yes — they pitied her and offered it freely

'Here is mustard-seed; take it!' The seed was never the difficulty.

Whether any son or daughter, father or mother of theirs had died

It is this question, not the request for seed, that ends the search.

That their dead outnumbered their living, and that she should not make them speak of it

Not one household in the city was without its dead.

The lights of the city flickering up and being extinguished

In the end the whole place was dark.

That the lives of men also flicker up and are extinguished again

She makes the comparison herself; nobody explains the image to her.

That her grief had been selfish, and that death comes to everybody alike

She adds that in this valley of desolation there is a path to immortality for one who has surrendered all selfishness.

An area filled with deep sorrow

It is Kisa Gotami's own phrase for the world she is walking through.

By setting a task whose failure would teach her, instead of correcting her

He never said a word about death to her before she set out.

1 and 2 only

Not one household in the city was without its dead.

Repaired to — went to

Procure means to obtain, desolation means deep sorrow, and a physician is a doctor.

He accepted her request and set her a task instead of refusing her

Accepting the request is what makes the teaching work; a refusal would simply have been another door closed.

That the Buddha should have told her the truth at once

She makes no complaint against the Buddha at all.

The Buddha told her nothing; he sent her to every door in the city to be told by other people

The method is the answer, so the opening should name it.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include at least six of: the death of her only son; carrying the child from neighbour to neighbour asking for medicine; 'She has lost her senses'; the man who sends her to Sakyamuni; her request to the Buddha for medicine; the handful of mustard-seed and her joy; th…

That nobody who has been born can escape dying

Death is placed inside the definition of a living being, not treated as a misfortune.

That everything made must end in being broken

Every pot the potter makes will break, and the maker knew it when he made it.

A father cannot save his son, nor kinsmen their relations

The line is aimed exactly at Kisa Gotami, who had gone door to door trying to save her son.

It means 'note this', calling the listener's attention to what follows

It is the one moment in the passage where the Buddha commands his listeners' attention directly.

The wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world

'So the world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore…'

Draw out the arrow made of wailing, complaining and sorrow

An arrow left in the body goes on injuring; drawing it out is the only way to heal.

Peace of mind, freedom from sorrow, and blessing

He 'has become composed', which means calm and settled.

Because it reports an incident more than two millennia old

Hence 'thee', 'thy', 'Pray tell me', 'repaired to', 'kinsmen' and 'Mark!'

Sadness, anger, guilt, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue and disbelief

It notes that sadness is the commonest and is not necessarily shown by crying.

Reach out, but accept that some will not share their grief; be patient

It says grief is expressed through a variety of behaviours.

That his family were not mourning in the right way, since the proper first stage is denial

Etzioni rejects the whole idea of a correct sequence.

There is no set form for grief and no 'right' way to express it

He was, and remains, angry, and says so plainly.

Keep busy, telephone each other, play with Max, and sit with the young widow

They give long answers to simple questions like 'How did your day go today?'

1 and 2 only

What is promised is peace of mind, freedom from sorrow and blessing — nothing about the dead returning.

He tells them to draw out the arrow of lamentation and become composed, not to forget anyone

Nothing in the sermon asks anyone to forget; it asks them to stop being injured by the loss.

The Buddha first proves that death spares nobody, and only then says what to do about grief

Naming the order of the argument is the quickest way into a good answer.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the order of the argument with quotation or close paraphrase: life troubled, brief and combined with pain; no means of avoiding death; the ripe fruit image; the earthen vessels image; young and adult, fools and wise; a father cannot save his son; the ox led t…

Until then he had been deliberately kept from seeing sickness, age and death

The story turns on that protection ending, not on hardship beginning.

He has given up everything he might lose, and so hints at an answer

The first three are illness, old age and death — a question; the fourth is a possible reply to it.

The Buddha's wisdom about one inscrutable kind of suffering

'Inscrutable' means something which cannot be understood — here, grief at death.

Because the life is the credential for what the sermon claims

A man who left everything in order to look at suffering honestly has earned the right to speak about it.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

The monk begging for alms has already given up everything he might lose.

The life is summarised because the sermon is the real subject

Twenty-five years are covered in three sentences; the sermon itself is printed in full.

It marks the moment he stops searching outward

Seven years of wandering end in one place and one promise, and the answer comes within a week.

Names record what has happened rather than merely labelling things

'Buddha' works the same way: the Awakened, the Enlightened.

What mattered was the length of the search, not its incidents

Seven years is stated and passed over in half a sentence.

To assure the reader that what follows are the Buddha's own words

The sentence acts as a bridge from biography to the text that follows it.

He had given up everything in order to face suffering honestly, and teaches others to face it too

The biography is placed first precisely so that the sermon carries weight.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the four sights correctly named and in order; the progression from illness to age to death, with a comment on why each is harder to dismiss than the last; the monk as a figure who has given up what can be lost; the recognition that the sights pose a questio…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should develop at least four links between the biography and the sermon, for example: the Buddha's own family life and attachments; the sudden, first-hand discovery of suffering paralleling Kisa Gotami's; the seven years of search as the cost behind the advice; his immedia…

He neither argues with her nor humours her, but sends her on

He could not give her medicine himself, but he knew of a physician who could.

So that she will discover it herself instead of being told

A truth heard from somebody else is an argument; a truth found at fifty doors is a fact.

That in every family the dead outnumber those still alive

It is the bleakest and most instructive sentence in the chapter.

Because the understanding must be her own to hold

The Buddha arranged the journey precisely so that the insight would arrive without him.

She had treated her loss as unique while every house carried its own

She does not mean that it was wrong to love her son.

Surrendering all selfishness

Whoever gives up all selfishness, she says, can find a path out of that valley of sorrow.

The first time she wanted a cure; the second time she asked a question and got facts

One person can be argued with; fifty households naming their dead cannot.

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Both are true, but her carrying the child is not why the Buddha withholds the plain statement.

The identical route makes the change in her entirely visible

Same doors, different question — and what she carries away is completely different.

It shows that every household was quietly carrying a loss of its own

Her own grief had made those losses invisible to her until she asked.

It stands out and carries the meaning at exactly the right moment

Everything else is dialogue and action; the one description is where the understanding happens.

They accept them when they discover them, not when they are told them

Kisa Gotami had been told the boy was dead on the very first day, and it changed nothing.

So that the loss stands alone and could belong to anyone

Two facts are given — an only son, and he died — and the rest is what she does about it.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the Buddha accepting rather than refusing her request; the mustard seed as an easy, hopeful task; the impossible condition and its four relations; the task sending her into others' grief; her hearing the same answer at every door; the contrast with being to…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. A reasoned answer either way is acceptable, provided it is grounded in the text. Content should include: what the word cannot mean (that love or grief is wrong); the evidence that she had not noticed others' losses; 'Do not remind us of our deepest grief'; the sense of 'selfish' a…

That mortals are in danger of death from birth, as fruit is from ripeness

The danger begins at ripeness, which is why the image is about birth rather than old age.

That relatives look on, lamenting, and can do nothing at all

The family are present, they are lamenting deeply, and they are powerless.

It brings no peace of mind, and the dead are not saved by it

The mourner's pain becomes greater, his body suffers, and he makes himself sick and pale.

It accepts that grief is a real wound rather than a fault

The sermon calls grief useless and harmful, not wicked, and offers treatment rather than blame.

There was no house in which somebody had not died

The old construction hides a double negative, which is why students are asked to rephrase it.

They give a steady, unhurried rhythm that helps the argument persuade

The textbook asks students to split one such sentence into three and compare the rhythm.

'We are not to ask why, but what'

The “what” is whatever those left behind can do for one another.

The Buddha in understanding, the guide in recognising feelings, Etzioni in action

All three refuse to deny the loss; they differ on what to do next.

A is false, but R is true

He never blames her; the assertion is false. The reason gives his actual position.

Because the advice makes sense only once the universality is accepted

'The wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world' depends entirely on the terms being known first.

To close off any idea that understanding might exempt a person from death

Age does not exempt and neither does wisdom: 'all fall into the power of death'.

The story shows the teaching being discovered; the sermon states it

She reaches 'death is common to all' at the wayside; the sermon says 'all are subject to death'.

Neither is close: the Buddha does prescribe a way — composure

Etzioni rejects prescription altogether, while the Buddha recommends drawing out the arrow — a genuine difference to discuss.

Its conditions — what is included in being alive at all

Knowing them is what distinguishes the wise, who do not grieve.

That the loss is real and must not be denied

They differ only on what should follow that acceptance.

It makes grief something that can be acted upon rather than merely endured

Fruit and pots explain why death happens; the arrow tells the mourner what to do next.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the common ground that loss must not be denied; the Buddha's remedy of understanding and composure, with at least one quotation; the guide's list of feelings and its advice of reaching out and patience; Etzioni's rejection of set stages, his anger, the maxi…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the reason for the old-fashioned style; at least three archaic expressions with their modern equivalents; the use of semicolons and their effect on rhythm, with the textbook's split-sentence exercise; the everyday sources of the images; and a judgement abou…