relation to the highest truth. And they learned well. In the
flushed splendor of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming
and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn
foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of
wave or cloud, they saw old parables of perpetual meaning. Even
their calamities--fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence--
interpreted to them unceasingly the doctrine of the eternal
Vanishing.

_All things which exist in Time must perish. The forests, the
mountains,--all things thus exist. In Time are born all things
having desire._

_The Sun and Moon, Sakra himself with all the multitude of his
attendants, will all, without exception, perish; there is not one
that will endure._

_In the beginning things were fixed; in the end again they
separate: different combinations cause other substance; for in
nature there is no uniform and constant principle._

_All component things must grow old; impermanent are all
component things. Even unto a grain of sesamum seed there is no
such thing as a compound which is permanent. All are transient;
all have the inherent quality of dissolution._

_All component things, without exception, are impermanent,
unstable, despicable, sure to depart, disintegrating; all are
temporary as a mirage, as a phantom, or as foam.... Even as all
earthen vessels made by the potter end in being broken, so end