The Tirthankara has attained kevala jnana and then, at death, siddhahood, which means the soul rises to the Siddhashila at the top of the universe and remains there without body, without action, and without any relation to the world it left. It cannot hear a prayer. It has no capacity to grant anything, no interest in doing so, and no perception of the request as a request addressed to it. The tradition says this openly in its own catechisms. And Jains build enormous temples, perform daily image worship, and compose devotional hymns to these same beings — because the veneration is understood to work on the venerator, orienting the mind toward the qualities being honoured and thereby affecting the karma of the person bowing. Whether this is coherent has been argued inside Jainism itself: the Sthanakvasi and Terapanth reform movements rejected image worship partly on exactly this ground, and the popularity of the yakshis, who are held to actually respond, suggests that many ordinary worshippers want an addressee. It remains one of the more intellectually honest arrangements any religion has produced.