**1) Explain—with reference to a pastry shop—what happens just after the mind has gone through the first five steps in the chain of suffering.**  The fifth link in the chain of pain had brought us up to misunderstanding, in a very specific moment of our life, the very nature of a maple-covered donut in a shop.  And let’s say that it happens to be the last maple-covered donut in the shop.  We believe that it will come to us if we reach out and take it; if we pay money for it; and because someone somewhere has baked it.  In reality though the donut exists only because we have served just such a donut to someone else, in the past.  Now there’s nothing wrong with taking the last donut; but let’s say that we have just overheard an elderly lady in line behind us mention to her husband that maple-covered donuts are her favorite.  The next step then in the wheel of pain would be if we take the last donut for ourselves.  This is the sixth step: committing a karma, or ignorant action, due to ignorant liking or disliking. **2) Explain briefly the Sanskrit word karma; where the word comes from; and some related English words.**  The Sanskrit word karma thus refers to any ignorant action of body, speech, or mind that we ever undertake.  Like the word kriya in kriya yoga, the word karma comes from the Sanskrit root √kir  k« , meaning “to make or do or grow.”  Again, related English words would be create, cereal, or crescent (a growing moon). **3) How does an act of karma leave an imprint or seed in our mind, and what decides how strong the seed will be?**  We plant a seed or imprint of karma simply by being aware that we are doing something, saying something, or thinking something.  In this sense the mind is like an extremely sensitive video camera which is recording every event of our life, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the length of our entire lives.  Factors such as our intention, the strength of our emotions, our awareness of what we are doing, the amount of premeditation or preparation we have gone through, the types of people or other creatures we affect, how far we go in completing a deed, and how we feel about the deed afterwards all contribute to how strong the seed will be, and how soon it ripens. **4) Very basically, there are three choices about where the pain of life comes from.  Discuss them.** The first choice is that our life is just a huge coincidence of random atomic particles bumping into each other ever since a Big Bang, or first event of the universe.  This is the viewpoint of science.  It certainly doesn’t feel right that the unique personality and face of each person we ever meet in life is just some incredible accident, and of course the whole idea of a “first” event with no cause itself contradicts the most fundamental laws of science.  The second choice is that some higher and infinitely compassionate intelligence has created everything and everybody, and created it in such a way that we always lose everything to the agonies of old age, cancer, war, death.  (It’s important to say though that there are beings who know all things, and who are hovering around us constantly, waiting to guide us perfect happiness; just that they are unable to do this unless we collect the necessary karma by taking care of others.)  The third choice is that things come from karma: that there is an absolute justice to the universe, and that we get back exactly what we do to other people, good or bad. **5) What is the first and most important law of karma?** The first and most important law of karma is that good deeds towards others lead to pleasant results, and bad deeds lead to unpleasant results.  This explains where all the pain of the world comes from: only from ourselves, according to how we have treated others in the past. **6) In many traditional classes in Indian yoga, we chant Shanti, shanti, shanti.  Explain what the word in this chant means; where the word comes from; related English words; and why it is chanted three times.** The word shanti means “peace.”  It comes from a root √sham  sam, which means “to be quiet,” and is related itself to a root √ksham ]m! , “to endure something” patiently or peacefully.  These roots come into English in the words calm and quiet.  We chant this word three times because we are praying that all beings may achieve freedom or peace from the three different types of suffering.  The first of these is called “obvious suffering,” such as the pain of a backache.  The second is the “suffering of change,” such as a fine meal which ends and eventually leaves us hungry once again.  The third is the “suffering of life itself,” meaning the fact that (unless we succeed in our practice of yoga) we will inevitably get old and die. **7) Why do relationships go bad?** We meet somebody, somebody exciting, and the feeling is mutual.  In six months we can’t stand each other.  What went wrong?  We tend to look in the wrong place when we’re trying to figure out why a relationship has gone bad.  It’s not either person’s fault, and it’s not that you haven’t done one thing or another to try to fix things.  We meet a person that we like because a karmic seed ripens within our mind, and creates them.  The power of this seed wears out naturally and automatically simply as it produces this person, from hour to hour, day to day.  As the power of the seed reaches its end, so does the relationship.  Unless we know how to plant a new seed, or perpetuate the original seed, then all such relationships must end, no matter what we do.  This is the second type of suffering, the suffering of change, and it also causes our body and mind to age, decay, and die.