Our past actions burden us today, and our present actions prepare us for future suffering. But this chain can be broken at once for one who adopts God-consciousness and serves Him with love and devotion. This means that loving and devoted service to the Lord is capable of reducing our sins and all defilements to nothing.

But three miseries also continually cause us suffering. These are those caused by the body and mind, those caused by other living entities, those caused by material nature (hurricanes, drought, heat, earthquakes, floods, etc.), and those caused by birth, illness, old age, and finally, death.

Suffering is useful and necessary because, through the pain we feel, it allows us to understand what evil thoughts, words, and actions generate, and thus to make the firm resolve never again to do evil in any form whatsoever, to anyone, human, animal, or plant.

Suffering is useful and necessary because it allows us to reduce the mass of culpable acts accumulated during all our previous lives and to erase the sins inherent in these malicious, even criminal, acts.

Suffering is useful and necessary because it allows us to have a precise idea of the pain felt by the person we harmed in our previous life, being indifferent to their cries. It also allows us to know that “what we have done will be done to us.”

Suffering is useful and necessary because it allows us to become aware of our evil acts, to do penance, to repent, to ask for forgiveness, to turn to God, and to respect and definitively apply divine precepts, laws, and commandments.

We must also understand that we are constantly suffering the consequences of our sinful actions in our previous lives. Karma, in this case, acts like an infallible form of justice. It is through karma, or the law of cause and effect, that we can correct our behavior and improve ourselves.

The Supreme Personality of Godhead teaches us the ideal attitude to adopt: Fleeting joys and sorrows, like summers and winters, come and go. They are due solely to the encounter of the senses with matter, and we must learn to tolerate them without being affected by them.

We cannot escape the sufferings of this world; the only remedy is to tolerate them, accept them, and endure them. He who not only manages to tolerate the miseries of this world, but also remains calm and serene in the face of its joys and sorrows, is worthy of liberation.

The Supreme Eternal says: He who is unaffected by joy and sorrow, who remains calm and resolute in all circumstances, is worthy of liberation (of salvation).