Why Does Life Hurt?

Naughty Krishna holding a piece of candy

Why does a loving God let his children suffer?

Atheists claim this question disproves religion. But does it? I knew it had to have an answer, and I looked for this answer in different spiritual paths. Know where I found it? Of course, in Krishna Consciousness.

The one God  has given us the different religions as paths where we can stroll, trot, or run past suffering and leave it behind. Yes. Why blame God for our pain when he urges us to take the path out? He says it  in the different scriptures. Over and over again.

But the question remains: Why does God allow suffering in the first place? Why does God give us pain before he shows us the way out?

Again, Krishna gave me the answer, though it applies to all the paths he has given. It begins with the soul.

But first, let me sum up the problem.

We suffer because we are out of our element like  a fish jumping out of the bowl. And speaking of fish, when I was a teenager I had some tropical fish, including a Siamese fighting fish named Sam. Now this guy would often jump out of the tank.

He would land on the hard linoleum floor and lie there till  someone found him (always in time, fortunately) and saved him from a suffocating death.  But what if he had landed on a soft silken pillow? He still would suffer and die, wouldn’t he? Because he had jumped out of his element.

All right. But what has this to do with me? I have no Siamese blood (though some of us may ) nor have I scales or fins. But like Sam, I have jumped out of my element.

To understand more about the element, let’s go back  to the soul and put it all together.

In the Bhagavad-Gita (2.12) Lord Krishna  explains that the soul, a complete person,  lives forever:

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.

And again in Bhagavad-Gita (2.23) Krishna tells us that the soul cannot change:

This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.

The souls number in the millions, billions, trillions, and beyond, up to infinite numbers. But they sometimes make one mistake. And thus  they suffer.

Sometimes a soul walks away from his eternal home in the spiritual world and comes into this material kingdom. But why?

Because this soul has voluntarily accepted the delusion that he can usurp Krishna’s place as the supreme enjoyer. “Why Krishna? Why not me?”

Don’t understand? Let me explain. All souls act as objects of enjoyment for Krishna, the one supreme enjoyer.

Not fair, you  say. Why does Krishna get to have all the fun? Oh, but he doesn’t. Do you know why devotees call Krishna the Reservoir of Pleasure? Because the soul may feel more pleasure from serving Krishna than Krishna feels from accepting the service. And Krishna knows this.

So what does Krishna do about it? Does he take pleasure away from the devotees? No. Not at all. He does the opposite. He takes up the life of a devotee.  He comes into this world as Sri Chaitanya and chants Hare Krishna and preaches the Bhagavad-Gita.

And don’t we see this principle in the other spiritual paths too? Jesus, none other than  the son of God, lived the life of a perfect Christian.  Gautama Buddha, himself the ultimate truth of Buddhism, lived the life of a perfect Buddhist monk.

Get the message? Chaitanya, Jesus, Buddha—they can do whatever they want, but they choose the life of a perfect follower. Maybe they want to tell us something?

All well and good to explain pleasure, you say, but the question of pain still nags at us. If God enjoys so much fun, why does he let us suffer?

All right. Let’s go back to Sam, my little fish. He has jumped out of his tank. Now whether Sam lands on a hard floor or a soft  pillow, he will suffer because he is out of his element. I can offer him all the best things life—the latest iPhone, a whole pizza with olives, a lovely female  fish— but still he will suffer. First, I must drop him back into the water.

Why does Sam jump? Before you wonder about the why, first put Sam back in the water.

And why did I jump? First put me back into my element.

But what does “element” mean? Maybe I could also call it “home.” Would that help? Prabhupada explains:

But another question arises: What do we do in our eternal home?Lord Chaitanya explains:

My dear Lord Krishna, son of Maharaja Nanda, I am Your eternal servant, but somehow or other I have fallen into this ocean of nescience. Please pick Me up from this ocean of death and place Me as one of the atoms at Your lotus feet. (Siksastaka 5)

But what has all this to do with pain?  Because we have wrongly accepted the earth as our home and our element, we try to find pleasure in the things of this planet. But as eternal souls, we need unending pleasures. Lord Krishna elaborates in the Bhagavad-Gita:

An intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due to contact with the material senses. O son of Kunti, such pleasures have a beginning and an end, and so the wise man does not delight in them. (5.22)

I can’t guarantee you’ll never feel pain again. Pain muscles its way in as part of the deal when you come to the  material world … but only as long as you stay here.

And pain follows you everywhere you wander in the universe, from the nearest rock to the farthest star. As Krishna tells his friend Arjuna:

From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again. (8.16)

So do this: Take up once more your eternal role as the Lord’s servant.  Then go back to your element when you finish with the material world.

You can do it. As the Chinese proverb goes, Nothing in this world is difficult for one who has a heart.

—Umapati Swami, May 25, 2024

PS. I thought you might like this passage from the Srimad Bhagavatam about King Bharat, who renounced everything to serve Lord Krishna. (“Bharat” is also the Indian name for India, in honor of this great soul.)