Meditation
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115 free Meditation trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free meditation trivia questions with answers. Explore the ancient practice of meditation through our engaging trivia quiz. Whether you're a seasoned meditator or just curious about mindfulness, this quiz will test your knowledge of meditation techniques, philosophies, and benefits. Discover fascinating facts about meditation traditions from around the world.
30 of 115 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sacred syllable is traditionally chanted at the start of Hindu prayers, recitations and meditation?
Om
Om is built from three sounds, a-u-m, which Hindu tradition reads as triads such as earth, atmosphere and heaven, so the one syllable is held to contain the whole universe.
Q 02Under which tree is the Buddha said to have sat in meditation until he reached enlightenment?
Bodhi tree
Bodhi tree: the original sacred fig at Bodh Gaya no longer survives, but each time it was cut down it was replanted from its own saplings, so the tree honoured there is a descendant.
Q 03Studies link regular meditation to lower levels of which hormone?
Cortisol
Cortisol, the body's main stress hormone, fell along with heart rate and inflammation markers in a 2017 pooled analysis of 45 trials; melatonin, by contrast, has been found to rise after a session.
Q 04Tibetan monks build intricate mandalas over days or weeks, then ritually sweep them away, using what material?
Coloured sand
Coloured sand is poured into place through metal funnels called chak-pur; once the mandala is complete the monks sweep it up and tip it into a river, a lesson in the impermanence of all things.
Q 05Zen master Hakuin's famous koan asks a student to hear the sound of what?
One hand
One hand: two hands clapped together make a sound, Hakuin would say, so listen for the sound of one; he set the puzzle to new students in 18th-century Japan and it became one of the most famous koans of all.
Q 06Which technology chief executive, a long-time Zen student, was married in 1991 by the Zen priest Kobun Chino Otogawa?
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs took up Zen under Kobun in the 1970s and, before founding Apple, thought of giving his life wholly to Zen, even of entering a monastery in Japan.
Q 07A 2015 JAMA Internal Medicine trial found mindfulness improved older adults' quality of what?
Sleep
Sleep: in the 49-person trial, six weeks of mindfulness classes improved sleep quality more than a standard sleep-hygiene course did, and eased daytime fatigue as well.
Q 08Raked-gravel Zen gardens such as Ryōan-ji's, designed as aids to meditation, are a hallmark of which Japanese city?
Kyoto
Kyoto's Ryōan-ji sets fifteen rocks in raked gravel so that from any spot at least one is hidden; such gardens are meant to be contemplated from a seat on the veranda, never walked through.
Q 09Which measure did a 2013 American Heart Association statement say TM may help to lower?
Blood pressure
Blood pressure: the AHA's 2013 review of alternative approaches said TM may be considered, but it ranked exercise and device-guided breathing as better supported by the evidence.
Q 10What does the title 'Buddha' literally mean in Sanskrit?
Awakened one
Awakened one: the word comes from a Sanskrit verb meaning to wake up, and it is a title rather than a name, one Buddhist tradition also gives to earlier teachers and to Maitreya, a buddha still to come.
Q 11In which Hindu scripture does Krishna teach the warrior Arjuna how to sit and steady the mind in meditation?
Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita: in its sixth chapter Krishna tells Arjuna to set a firm seat of kusha grass, deerskin and cloth in a clean spot, neither too high nor too low, before trying to still the mind.
Q 12A 2010 study of US Marines preparing to deploy found mindfulness training protected what under stress?
Memory
Memory: working memory normally shrinks under pre-deployment stress, and it did in the untrained Marines; in Amishi Jha's study it grew in those who put in the most mindfulness practice.
Q 13The whirling dervishes, whose spinning is a form of active meditation, belong to an order founded by followers of which poet?
Rumi
Q 21Which Chinese martial art is often described as 'meditation in motion'?
Tai chi
Tai chi is practised as an unbroken series of slow, gentle moves with names like 'white crane spreads its wings'; a Harvard health guide puns that it might as well be called medication in motion.
Q 22In the classical eight limbs of yoga, which stage comes immediately before meditation (dhyana)?
Concentration
Concentration (dharana) means holding the mind steady on one point; when that hold becomes an unbroken flow of awareness, the texts call it meditation, the next limb.
Q 23The Chinese Buddhist phrase xinyuan, for an unsettled mind, compares it to which animal?
Monkey
Monkey: xinyuan, 'heart-monkey', pictures the mind leaping restlessly from thought to thought; the companion phrase yima, 'idea-horse', completes the Chinese idiom for a distracted mind.
Rumi's disciples organised the Mevlevi order in Konya after his death; Turkey outlawed Sufi orders in 1925, and the dervishes' lodge there was turned into a museum.
Q 14In yoga, which Sanskrit term covers the breath-control exercises often practised before meditation?
Pranayama
Pranayama is the fourth of classical yoga's eight stages; its immediate goal is to slow breathing to an effortless, even rhythm, freeing the mind from attention to the body.
Q 15The practice of 'body scan' meditation primarily involves focusing awareness on what?
Physical sensations, area by area
Physical sensations, area by area: attention climbs from the toes to the top of the head, and the task is only to notice weight, vibration or warmth as they are, in line with the MBSR course's rule of non-striving.
Q 16What do many Eastern traditions call the state of complete meditative absorption?
Samadhi
Samadhi is the absorbed state in which the mind stays fully alert yet untouched by desire or anger; in India a holy person's tomb is also called a samadhi, since such teachers are said to die in that state.
Q 17Meditation calms anxiety partly by dialling down the sympathetic nervous system, the branch linked to which response?
Fight-or-flight
Fight-or-flight is the sympathetic system's alarm setting, which speeds the heart and breathing; pooled trials find that meditation lowers heart rate as that activity eases.
Q 18In the context of meditation, what does the term 'open monitoring' typically involve?
Non-judgmental awareness of whatever arises
Open monitoring means non-judgmental awareness of whatever arises, with no fixed object; teachers usually train focused attention first, because only a calmed mind can drop its object and simply watch.
Q 19Brain scans link mindfulness training to calmer responses in which region, often called the brain's fear centre?
Amygdala
Amygdala responses to emotional images fell after eight weeks of mindful-attention training, even when the volunteers were not meditating; a separate study found its grey matter grew less dense as stress eased.
Q 20The earliest clear records of meditation (dhyana) appear in which philosophical texts attached to the Vedas?
The Upanishads
The Upanishads are the last layer of the Vedas and mark a turn from ritual to inner inquiry; the earliest date from around the middle of the first millennium BCE, well before the Puranas.
Q 24Which Christian group traditionally worships in shared silence, speaking only when someone feels moved to?
Quakers
Quakers call it waiting worship: with no sermon or set order, the meeting sits in silence until someone feels led to speak, though many Quaker churches, especially in Africa, hold services with hymns and a pastor instead.
Q 25In Buddhist teaching, what is described as the "far enemy" of mettā (loving-kindness)?
Ill will
Ill will is loving-kindness's 'far enemy', its plain opposite; the Visuddhimagga's subtler 'near enemy' is worldly affection, which looks like love but clings.
Q 26The Pashupati seal, whose central figure some read as sitting in a yoga pose, comes from which civilisation?
Indus Valley
Indus Valley: the seal was dug up at Mohenjo-daro in the 1920s, and John Marshall read its horned, seated figure as an early Shiva, a reading later scholars such as Doris Srinivasan have challenged.
Q 27A Zen koan poses a riddle reason cannot solve in order to stir up what in the student?
Great doubt
Great doubt is the aim: the student concentrates on a single word such as the 'mu' of a famous koan until, in the Zen phrase, the ball of doubt shatters into insight.
Q 28A meta-analysis first published in 2017 found meditation had small-to-medium effects on empathy, compassion and what kind of behaviour?
Prosocial
Prosocial behaviour means acts that help others; a 2018 review then found the compassion gains appeared only against do-nothing control groups, or when the meditation teacher was a co-author of the study.
Q 29What is kinhin, which Zen practitioners do between long periods of seated meditation?
Walking meditation
Kinhin is walking meditation: practitioners pace slowly in a straight line or a circle between periods of zazen, keeping attention on each step and on the breath.
Q 30John Teasdale's 2000 trial found the mindfulness course MBCT cut relapse after three or more bouts of which illness?
Depression
Depression: MBCT lowered relapse only in patients with three or more past episodes; in those with just two it made no difference, which is why the course is aimed at people whose illness keeps returning.