Neither in the sky, nor in the midst of the ocean, nor entering a mountain cleft, can one find a place in the world where one is safe from death.

This verse is almost identical to the previous (127) but with a different ending: nappasahetā maccū — where death does not overtake. The intentional parallel between karmic consequences (127) and death (128) establishes a deep equivalence: both are inevitable, universal, without place of escape.

Maccū — death: the lord of the end, inevitable for all conditioned beings. Like karma, death is not a vengeful entity but the natural manifestation of impermanence.

The pair 127-128 closes the chapter on evil with a double teaching on inevitability: neither the consequences of karma nor death can be avoided by any geographic or physical means.

The Buddhist response to this inevitability is not despair but practice: if one cannot escape from death or karma, the only intelligent response is to live such that karma is positive and death comes to a being who has done the work of inner transformation.