In Sayings on Impermanence we find:
If even the body of the Sugata, blazing with a thousand marks, Accomplished from hundreds of meritorious acts, is impermanent, How will one’s body, as undependable As a bubble that bursts, not certainly perish? Look at how the sun will set—the Buddha who came for beings’ sake; And the moon as well—the treasury of the sublime Dharma. And know that in all one’s prosperity, one’s retinue and wealth, There is nothing that is eternal. The protectors of the world—Brahma, Ishvara, Vishnu, Indra, the Four Great Kings, and others—fill the world with great beams of light and are brighter than a thousand suns. Their majesty and merit are renowned through all the heavens and the earth. They are the lords of all worlds— subterranean, earthly, and heavenly—adorned with the greatest fortune. And yet for them too the time will come to die, as is written in the Vinaya scriptures: O monks, look at all these riches that fade and are essenceless. As I remember my past lives in cyclic existence, even though I was Brahma, Indra, the Four Great Kings, and other lords of beings an inconceivable number of times, I was never satiated, and I transmigrated and fell to the lower realms. Furthermore, the gods, demigods, accomplished ascetics, and mantra holdersb are also all bound to die, as the Vinaya scriptures affirm: Gods who have accomplished concentration, spirits who can take human form,41 Demigods, sages, and ascetics, refulgent with splendor And living for kalpas on end—if even they are impermanent, Need one mention human beings, Whose frail bodies will perish and disintegrate like bursting bubbles? Universal emperors with dominion over the four continents, kings, ministers, monks and nuns, brahmins, householders, and the rest—not a single being is exempt from death, as we read in the Intentionally Spoken Chapters: Emperors who possess the seven jewels, Kings and ministers, Monastics, brahmins, householders, and the rest— All these beings are impermanent: They are like beings in a dream.
C. Reflecting on the inevitability of death by investigating different examples In this world of ours, there has been change as the past age of complete