The Tattvartha Sutra sets out the Jain understanding of reality under its seven (or nine) fundamental categories (tattvas): the sentient soul (jiva) and the non-sentient (ajiva), the inflow of karmic matter (asrava), its bondage (bandha) to the soul, the stopping of that inflow (samvara), the shedding of accumulated karma (nirjara), and final liberation (moksha). On this scaffold it lays out the whole Jain worldview: a beginningless universe of innumerable eternal souls entangled, through their own action, with a subtle material karma that clings to and weighs down the soul, obscuring its innate infinite knowledge and bliss.
Liberation is achieved by stopping the inflow of new karma and burning off the old through ethical discipline, non-violence and austerity, until the purified soul rises to the summit of the universe in omniscient freedom. The text also expounds Jain cosmology, the classes of living beings, the ethics of the layperson and the ascetic, and the celebrated Jain teaching on the many-sidedness of reality. Its coverage is deliberately comprehensive: it is, in effect, a compact encyclopaedia of the faith.