The Holocaust

From http://popchassid.com/photos-holocaust-narrative/

The Holocaust has scarred us, a yetzer hara (sneaky bastard of a voice in our heads), that keeps trying to tell us how we are defined by our past, controlled by events that happened to us, instead of using those moments as points of growth.

And, in a weird way, that’s why all those images of us looking so helpless, so gaunt, in heaps of nameless bodies, have become a morbid fascination for us.

We, and by extension the rest of the world, have chosen to define the Holocaust with these images. But there are other images. Images that show a more subtle, more true, story.

A story that shows our inner power, our inner turmoil in dealing with a situation we cannot comprehend, our attempts to gain justice, and our final steps into moving above and beyond our past and into a new future.

See more at: Holocaust

The Fourteen Stages of Development (Jainism)

(From Wikipedia)

The fourteen stages of development according to Jainism:

According to the Jain tradition, through the following fourteen stages of development, the soul gradually frees itself, firstly from the worst, then from the less bad and finally from all kinds of karma, and manifests the innate qualities of knowledge, belief and conduct in a more and more perfect form.

The first four gunasthana are related to belief or rationality in perception. As and when the soul acquires rationality in perception it moves on to 4^th gunasthana. Stages 5 to 14 relate to conduct. The purity in conduct determines the gunasthana from the 5^th stage onwards. Those who have taken the anuvratas {minor vows} may reach up to the 5^th Gunasthana. The 6^th to 14^th Gunasthanas can only be attained by those who have taken the Mahavratas (the major vows) of Jain asceticism.

The Fourteen Stages

मिथ्यदृष्टि गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of wrong belief.
सस्वदानंसंयाग्दृष्टि गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of one who has a slight taste of right belief.
मिश्रदृष्टि गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of mixed belief.
अविराट संयाग्दृष्टि गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of one who has true belief but has not self discipline.
देसाविराटा संयाग्दृष्टि गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of partial self-control.
प्रमातसंयत संयाग्दृष्टि गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of complete self-discipline, although sometimes wavering due to negligence.
अप्रमातसंयत गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of self-control without negligence.
निवृत्ति बद्र संपराय गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of one in whom the passions are still manifesting in an unevolved form.
अनिवृत्ति बद्र संपराय गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of one who practices the process called anivritti karana and in whom passions are still occurring.
सूक्षं संपराय गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of one in whom passions occur in a subtle form.
उपासमा कस्याव वित्राग चद्मस्ता गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of one who has suppressed every passion but still does not possess omniscience.
क्सिन कस्याव वित्राग चद्मस्ता गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of who has annihilated every passion but does not yet possess omniscience.
संयोगी केवलिन गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of omniscience with activity.
अयोगी केवलिन गुणस्थानः॥	The stage of omniscience without any activity.