लोक

The universe

Uncreated, eternal, finite in extent and shaped like a standing figure — with the liberated at the very top and no one governing any of it.

The universe was not created and will not end. This is stated first because everything else follows from it: with no creator there is no one to petition, no grace to receive, and no authority above the working of karma. What exists is a finite inhabited region, the loka, surrounded by infinite empty space in which nothing can move, because the medium of motion does not extend there.

The loka is described as shaped roughly like a person standing with hands on hips, and it is drawn that way constantly in Jain manuscript painting. It has three parts. The lower world holds the hells; the middle world is a thin disc holding the continents and oceans, of which the small part where humans can practise and attain liberation is a fraction; the upper world holds the heavens. At the very top, above everything, is the siddhashila, where liberated souls remain.

Time is cyclical and enormous. A cycle has a descending half, avasarpini, and an ascending half, utsarpini, each divided into six ages in which lifespans, stature and moral capacity rise or fall. The twenty-four Tirthankaras of this cycle all belong to the descending half; we are held to be in its fifth age, in which liberation is not attainable from this region, and the next Tirthankara belongs to a future cycle.

The cosmology is not incidental decoration. It is what makes the tradition’s claim about the current age coherent — that this is a time for maintaining the teaching rather than for expecting to complete the path — and it is why so much Jain effort has gone into preserving texts and building libraries.