reading comprehension Practice Questions Answers Test with Solutions & More Shortcuts

DIRECTIONS:

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below. Certain words/phrases are printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.

PASSAGE

One may look at life, events, society, history, in another way. A way which might, at a stretch, be described as the Gandhian way, though it may be from times before Mahatma Gandhi came on the scene. The Gandhian reaction to all grim poverty, squalor and degradation of the human being would approximate to effort at selfchange and self-improvement, to a regime of living regulated by discipline from within. To change society, the individual must first change himself. In this way of looking at life and society, words too begin to mean differently. Revolution, for instance, is a term frequently used, but not always in the sense it has been in the lexicon of the militant. So also with words like peace and struggle. Even society may mean differently, being some kind of organic entity for the militant, and more or less a sum of individuals for the Gandhian. There is yet another way, which might, for want of a better description, be called the mystic. The mystic's perspective measures these concerns that transcend political ambition and the dynamism of the reformer, whether he be militant or Gandhian. The mystic measures the terror of not knowing the remorseless march of time; he seeks to know what was before birth, what comes after death? The continuous presence of death, of the consciousness of death, sets his priorities and values: militants and Gandhians, kings and prophets, must leave all that they have built; all that they have unbuilt and depart when messengers of the buffalo-riding Yama come out of the shadows. Water will to water, dust to dust. Think of impermanence. Everything passes.