So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Rājagaha, in the Bamboo Grove, the squirrels’ feeding ground. There the Buddha addressed the mendicants: “Mendicants!” “Venerable sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“Mendicants, the life span of humans is short. You must go to the next life. So you should do what is skillful, you should practice the spiritual life. No-one born is immortal. A long life is a hundred years or a little more.”

Then Māra the Wicked went up to the Buddha and addressed him in verse:

“The life of humans is long!
A good person wouldn’t scorn it.
Live like a suckling babe,
for Death has not come for you.”

“The life of humans is short,
and a good person scorns it.
They should live as though their head were on fire,
for Death comes for everyone.”

Then Māra … vanished right there.