Impermanence

A grieving mother seeks a mustard seed to revive her dead son and learns, house by house, that death spares no family, per the Dhammapada commentary on verses 287 and 114.

Suparshvanatha, born at Varanasi, renounced his throne after watching leaves fall, becoming the seventh Tirthankara through the plainest of life's lessons.

A merchant's son who pays a courtesan a thousand pieces a day is thrown out the one evening he comes without gold, becomes an ascetic, and answers her plea to return with a list of impossible things.

Kept in an iron house for sixteen years to escape a vengeful ogress, a prince rides out on a state elephant, learns why he was hidden, sees that no wall can stop death, and renounces his throne.

Told to Mallika during a quarrel with King Pasenadi, two kinnaras still mourning one night's parting after 697 years lead a hunter-king to give up the chase.

Jātaka No. 525: King Sutasoma sees a grey hair, gives up his kingdom despite every plea, and a whole city follows him to a Himalayan hermitage.

Grief-maddened King Kaṇha demands a hare, then the hare in the moon; his brother Ghaṭapaṇḍita shows that weeping for the impossible is no madder than weeping for the dead.

A young hermit is nearly lured from the forest by a woman's charm, until his father's counsel on choosing wise companions holds him back.

A goose so swift he can catch four arrows fired at once tells a king that something else moves even faster: the decay carrying every living being toward death.

Jataka No. 146: After a wave drowns a hen crow, grieving crows try to empty the ocean to reclaim her, until a sea-sprite's fright ends their folly.

Cuckoo-king Kunala preaches on desire's deceit to five hundred homesick Sakyan and Koliyan monks on Mount Gandhamadana, freeing them all to attain Arahatship that same day.

Elder Bhaddaji lifts a long-sunken emerald palace from the Ganges on one finger, and the Buddha reveals that Bhaddaji was once its king — whose fuller story is told in the Suruci Jātaka.

Jataka No. 95: before dying at Kusinara, the Buddha recalls King Sudassana teaching his weeping queen that all component things are transient.

Jataka No. 9: King Makhadeva asks his barber to warn him of his first grey hair. When it appears, he sees it as Death's messenger and leaves his throne.

Jātaka No. 449: A deva in his dead son's form asks for the moon and sun as chariot wheels, and a grieving father sees the folly of mourning.

King Sādhīna's fast-day vows and charity carry him bodily to Tāvatiṃsa; after 700 years he refuses to live on a god's merit and returns to earn his own.

A hermit raises an elephant calf as his son and mourns its sudden death until Sakka, the Bodhisatta, consoles him that tears cannot restore the dead.

Given a crown to save a longing queen-mother, the Bodhisatta Susīma is woken to ageing by her grey-hair trick and leaves for the Himalayas.

Faced with slaughter by drunkards at a feast, a terrified young pig is comforted by his elder brother's teaching on virtue and fearless death.

King Udayabhadda dies, becomes Sakka, and tests his celibate queen with bowls of gold, silver, and iron before teaching her impermanence.

A prince watches morning dew vanish by evening and sees his own life in it so clearly that he renounces a kingdom of a thousand brothers that very day.

Kabir's bhajan on the body as a fine cloth, dyed in Ram's name and returned unstained, with a reminder that life is brief.

A nirgun pad attributed to Kabir, sung in the Malwa and wider North Indian tradition. A bridal-and-funeral scene asks who has plundered the town, and answers that the bond with the world is broken.

A nirgun pad attributed to Kabir that calls this world a foreign country where one is not meant to stay, likens it to paper, thorns and scrub, and names the Satguru's Name as the refuge.

A nirgun pad attributed to Kabir that lists everyone and everything that dies, from kings and prophets to the sun, moon and gods, and ends by pointing to what alone remains.

A Hindi song from the film Gopi (1970), lyrics by Rajendra Krishan, on life's impermanence and Ram's name as the one true companion.

Kabir wept at a grain mill turning between two stones: in the world's grinding duality, no one comes through whole. A Dohavali couplet on impermanence.

Dhammapada chapter on old age (verses 146–156), including the house-builder verses on craving and the impermanence of the body.

Dhammapada chapter on flowers (verses 44–59): garlands, honeybees and fragrance that travels against the wind teach a life of virtue before death comes.