जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
The subtle · everywhere in the loka

Sūkṣma nigoda

सूक्ष्म निगोद

The subtle nigoda are in water, land and sky without constraint: there is no point of the universe, from the seventh hell to Siddhaśilā's rim, that is not full of them.

The Ṣaṭkhaṇḍāgama places the subtle nigoda in water, on land and in the sky without material or spatial constraint — which is to say everywhere. They cannot be seen, cut, burned or crushed; no fire reaches them and no weapon; they neither harm nor are harmed by anything gross. Every space-point of the Loka is their address, inside the trasanāḍī and outside it, where nothing else can live.

This is the sense in which a Jain teacher says the universe is full of life: not that living things are common, but that there is nowhere, at all, that is not occupied. The gross nigoda, by contrast, live only where a body can be.

the lokaskandhaas Jambūdvīpa× asaṃkhyātaaṇḍaraas Bharata× asaṃkhyātaāvāsaas Kośala× asaṃkhyātapulavias Sāketa× asaṃkhyātaone bodyas a houseananta soulsthe nesting — Gommaṭasāra 164–165, the Digambara text's structureeach level holds asaṃkhyāta × the loka's space-points of the nextthe 563 kinds of living being — Jīva-vicāra22 · 6 · 20 · 303 · 198 · 14four are nigoda — and hold infinitely more souls than the other 559one breath: seventeen lives and a fraction, each 256 āvalikā65,536 in a muhūrta — the teachers say seventeen and a halfavyavahāra-rāśinever once trasa · infinitevyavahāra-rāśibeen out, come backSiddhaśilā608 liberated in six months and eight samayas608 leave the first heap in their placethe ledger — the commentators on Gommaṭasāra 197, and the thokaḍāevery siddha there has ever beenthe souls in one nigoda body — infinite times as many, off the frameNigoda: the smallest body, the most soulsa body too small to see, in which infinite souls are born, breathe and die togethereverywhere in the loka; four of the 563 kinds of living beingone body holds infinite times every siddha there has ever been — Gommaṭasāra 196608souls liberated, and 608 out of nigoda, every six months and eight samayas
Nigoda: the smallest body, the most souls — Sūkṣma nigoda highlighted

Measurements and counts

Wherewater, land, sky — every space-point of the loka
Seennever
Harmedby nothing gross
SourceṢaṭkhaṇḍāgama 14, sū. 636–640

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समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10