The reading preparation tests are given every two weeks to ensure that you are prepared for the more complex thinking required for team assignments, before you meet with your team. These tests measure (1) basic comprehension of essential terms, (2) awareness of primary sources, and (3) recognition of key images.

NOTE: each RPT takes place after an in-class study session, but before in-depth processing of the reading material in class. Therefore, doing well on RPTs requires more than attending the in-class study session. Most students find themselves needing to allow more time than they are used to for reading assigned materials.

Types of Questions:

1. Each RPT will begin with five (5) questions asking you to identify, and/or to answer a basic question regarding, one or more of the twelve terms & names listed in the left-hand column of the study guide provided for each two-week period. [read more...] These terms are drawn from the introductory readings, mostly IAR. The introductory readings are listed both in the course syllabus (next to the date of the relevant study session) and on the relevant study guide.
   
2. Each RPT will also contain three (3) questions asking you to identify, and/or to answer a basic question regarding, two unidentified excerpts drawn from the two required primary sources assigned for each two-week period. [read more...] These excerpts will be chosen from a set of three unidentified excerpts listed for each RPT at the bottom of the on-line version of this page. Required primary sources are listed both in course syllabus (next to the date of the relevant study session) and in the right-hand column of the study guide for each two-week period.
   
3. Finally, the last two (2) questions on each RPT will ask you to identify some object, individual or event depicted in a slide from the on-line PPT presentation reviewed briefly during each study session. [read more...] Each PPT may be accessed by clicking on its title listed in course syllabus (next to the date of the relevant study session). The name of each PPT is also listed the right-hand column of the study guide for each two-week period.

Logistics:

• RPTs will be administered on-line--first to individual students, and then to teams working as a group--during class time, in a computer lab location (TBA), on the second day of each two-week sub-unit (see syllabus for exact dates).To take the test you must have a valid Saclink username and password and have been added to WEBCT.
  
• Both individuals and teams will be allowed roughly twenty (20) minutes to complete each RPT, though extra time may be granted if needed. Each question will count for two and a half (2.5) points, for a total of 25 points for each individual and team. Since individual and team scores are added together, each individual ends up with a score out of 50 points for each RPT. The lowest RPT score wil be dropped for each individual and team.
  
• If you study for the RPT with others outside of class, please ask others to prepare independently before joining such a group. During the exam, make sure to keep your gaze fixed either on your own screen, or at some distant object at the front of the room or ceiling. Gazing at one or more other students' screens will be treated as attempted plagiarism. (See my statements about the importance of academic honesty in FAQ, #10-13.)

Phoenix Points

Excerpts (from required primary sources):

for RPT #0 (Trial)
(based on IAR, chapter 1, "Dimensions of Culture" in the syllabus, and "Xg57h4y Investigation Packet" in CP)
__________________________________________________________________

"Someone in a dress straight out of a museum, with its fitted bodice and a skirt that could only be rounded in that unnatural feminine circle with multiple hoops. The stranger stood, with perfect poise and complete confidence, in an alley that was only barely lit by torches from a nearby tavern....[she] could hear the rickety sounds of wheels over cobbled stone; she turned; saw shadows and mist. It was cold....."

"When a person incurs guilt in regard to any of the LORD's commandments about things not to be done, and does one of them--if it is the anointed priest...he shall offer for the sin of which he is guilty a bull of the herd without blemish as a sin offering to the LORD. He shall bring the bull to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, before the Lord, and lay his hand upon the head of the bull. The bull shall be slaughtered before the Lord, and the anointed priest shall take some of the bull's blood and bring it into the Tent of Meeting."

"The girl paused for just a moment--not enough to break stride. She glanced at a small boy walking with his father, out far past his bedtime. glanced, and passed, although on closer inspection, the tall man beside the boy wouldn't have passed for anyones's father on a day that wasn't Halloween. He wore dark robes that seemed to reach for dust-heavy wind, as if to grasp the dead and contain them."

[TOP]

for RPT #1a
__________________________________________________________________

"...the greatest warriors of our host, all enter rushing into your mouths, terror-inspiring with their fearful fangs. Some are caught between them, and their heads crushed into powder... The flames of your mouths devour all the worlds. Your glory fills the whole universe. But how terrible your splendor burns! Reveal yourself to me! Who are you in this form of terror? I adore you...be gracious to me. I yearn to know you...for I don't understand your mysterious works. "

"When the mind was thus concentrated, ...I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away and reappreance of all beings. I saw--by means of the divine eye, purified and surpassing the human--beings passing away and re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: 'These beings--who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, and mind, who reviled noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views--with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings--who were endowed with good conduct...have reappeared in good destinations, in the heavenly world.'...Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose--as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, and resolute."

"...[he] saw in that form countless visions of wonder: eyes from innumerable faces, numerous celestial ornaments, numberless heavenly weapons, celestial garlands and vestures, forms anointed with heavenly perfumes. The infinite divinity was facing all sides, all marvels contained in him. If the light of a thousand suns suddenly arose in the sky, that spendor might be compared to the radiance of the Supreme Spirit."

for RPT #1b
__________________________________________________________________

"...walk from left to right about the fires in which the offering has just been thrown...
'The holy fires around the altar kindle,
And at their margins sacred grass is piled;
Beneath their sacrificial odours dwindle
Misfortunes. May the fires protect you, child!'"

"..the learned seer cursed the enemies of the lord who had gathered there.... 'Because you have ignored the Vedas and because you have reviled the supreme lord Mahadeva Shankara, whom the world adores, all of you whose minds follow despicable scriptures that insult the way of the lord, you who are hostile to the lord, will be deprived of the three Vedas. You whose learning and conduct have come to naught, who chatter with false knowledge, you shall all be crushed.... The power born of tapas will utterly desert you and you will go to Hell.'"

"Her glance is straight; her eyes are flashing red;
Her speech is harsh, not drawlingly well-bred;
Her whole lip quivers, seems to shake with cold;
Her frown has straightened eyebrows arching bold....
When I refused but now hard-heartedly to know
Of love or secret vow, her eyes grew red; and so
Bending her arching brow, she fiercely shapped Love's bow."

[TOP]

for RPT #2a
__________________________________________________________________

"...purification rituals were begun....The representative of our kingdom and families went into seclusion in the residence of the Grand Protector....The princes performed their purifications in the offices of the Grand Protectorate, while the Imperial Marquises all held theirs in the offices of the county seat. All the Chamberlains, Commandants, Generals, Grandees, Gentlemen of the Palace Gate, and other lesser officials...conducted their purification rituals beyond the walls of Fenggao on the banks of the Wen River. The Defender-in-Chief and the Chamberlain for Ceremonials conducted their purifications at the residence of the Supervisor for Forestry and Hunting."

"Tzu-lu promptly and confidently replied, 'Give me a country of a thousand war-chariots, hemmed in by powerful enemies, or even invaded by hostile armies, with drought and famine to boot; in the space of three years I could endow the people with courage and teach them in what direction right conduct lies.'...Ch'iu replied saying, 'Give me a domain of sixty to seventy or say fifty to sixty (leagues), and in the space of three years I could bring it about that the common people should lack nothing. But as to rites and music, I should have to leave them to a real gentleman.'"

"I have heard...that there are among the men of the world three kinds of personal power (de/te). To grow to a stature so commanding, to possess beauty and grace so incomparable as to delight the eyes of all men, high or humble, young or old--this is the highest sort of power. To have a knowledge that embraces heaven above and earth below, to have abilities that can cope with every possible situation--this is the second and lower sort of power. To be bold, ruthless, undeterred by any hazard, a gatherer of multitudes and a causer of wars--this is the third and lowest kind of personal power. To possess any one of these three is sufficient to set a man with his face turned to the south and to give him the title of Lonely One."

for RPT #2b
__________________________________________________________________

"One's body will engender a lighted florescence, breath redolent as orchid;
One turns back, extinguishes the hundred malignities--one's features refined in jade.
With practice and attention, cultivate this, climbing to the Palace of Ample Cold.
Not sleeping either day or night, you will achieve then full perfection;
When thunder sounds and lightning spurts, your spirits are placid, impassive."

"I draw the bottle to me and pour myself a cup;
Seeing the trees in the courtyard brings joy to my face.
I lean on the south window and let my pride expand,
I consider how easy it is to be content with a little space. "

"Too much thinking harms my life;
Just surrender to the cycle of things,
Give yourself to the waves of the Great Change
Neither happy nor yet afriad.
And when it is time to go, then simply go
Without any unnecessary fuss..."

[TOP]

for RPT #3a
__________________________________________________________________

"Seeing means approaching virtuous people, waiting on them, inquiring about how they are, and looking them, because one who looks at a virtuous person with a delighted mind will not have eye disease for one thousand births. When the Buddha was living surrounded by monks at Vediya Mountain, an owl looked at him with a delighted mind, and that owl did not go to an evil birth for one hundred thousand eaons."

"His body, endowed with the signs and attributes of the fully enlighted Buddha, is like the Sun. It is the body of perfect spiritual rapture.
His speech, a union of sound and emptiness, which arises with incessant variety, is like the Moon, which has many varied reflections. It is the emanational body.
His mind, abiding without change, birthless and empty, is like the sky. It is the body of all that is real."

"That son of a god, bedecked with ornaments suitable to the occasion and shining like a flash of lightening, went to the Devram Monastery...in the middle of the night, accompanied by all the gods of the ten thousand worlds who had gathered in the human world in order to hear the Buddha talk....; these deties had all taken on visible forms, but there were so many that ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, seventy, or eighty had to stand on the tip of a hair."

for RPT #3b
__________________________________________________________________

"In the morning, as I look out at the boats on the Uji River by Okanoya, I may steal a phrase from the monk Mansei and compare this fleeting life to the white foam in their wake, and association may lead me to try a few verses myself in his style. Or in the evening, as I listen to the rustling of the maples in the wind the opening lines of the "Lute Maiden" by the great Chinese poet Po-chü-i naturally occur to my mind, and I play perhaps a piece or two in the style of Minamoto Tsunenobu. And if I am in the mood for music I may play the piece called "Autumn Wind" to the accompaniment of the creaking of the pine-trees outside, or that entitled "Flowing Waters" in harmony withthe purring of the stream."

"For some reason I was overcome with timidity; I flushed and had no idea what to do. Some of the other women managed to put down poems about the spring, the blossoms, and such suitable subjects; then they handed me the paper and said, 'Now it's your turn.' Picking up the brush, I wrote the poem that goes,
'The years have passed and age has come my way.
Yet I need only look at this fair flower for all my cares to melt away.'
I altered the third line, however, to read, 'Yet I need only look upon my lord.'"

"Hearing that the gentleman was bound to be successful, several people have gathered in his house for the occasion; among them are a number of retainers who served him in the past but who since then have either been engaged elsewhere or moved to som eremote province. Now they are all eager to accompany their former master on his visit to the shrines and temples, and their carriages pass to and fro in the coutryard. Indoors there is great commotion as the hangers-on help themselves to food and drink. Yet the dawn of the last day of the appointments arrives and still no one has knocked at the gate. The people in the house are nervous and prick up their ears."