Time in Jain cosmology is a wheel with twelve spokes, turning eternally: an utsarpini of six ascending ages and an avasarpini of six descending ones, each of enormous and specified duration. In the ascending half, human lifespan, stature, happiness and morality increase; in the descending half they decline. We are in the fifth age of a descending half, called dukhama, sorrowful — and the sixth will be worse. Mahavira, the last Tirthankara of this cycle, died in 527 BCE by the traditional reckoning, and no further Tirthankara will appear in this half-cycle; the tradition also holds that liberation directly from this region and this age is no longer possible, and that the best available outcome is a good rebirth in a place and time where it is. The next Tirthankara, Padmanabha, is due in the ascending half, unimaginably far off. Very few religious systems tell their adherents that the door is shut for the foreseeable future and that the age is degenerate by design, and Jainism does not soften it, which makes the continued rigour of Jain practice more rather than less striking.