We like to say so, because it helps us feel less terrible when going through difficult circumstances. It is not entirely untrue, but I would like to clarify the idea a little bit, to make it more real, and less fluff-talk.

Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. Pleasure is pleasure. Happiness is happiness. But all these conditions are states of mind. They are subjective.

Pain, for example, is not the electrochemical output of a nerve. It is our subjective emotional reaction to that electrochemical output. Neither is pleasure really a certain condition of neurons, rather it is our emotional reaction to that condition of neurons.

We cannot, and should not, try to erase and ignore the difference between pleasure and pain – but we should and must be aware that neither of them are objective circumstances. Both are subjective.

What this means is that our emotional reaction is MORE important – more real – than what we are reacting too. And that, in turn, suggests that we have some chance, some opportunity to “decide” or “determine” whether we will suffer and be miserable, or prosper and be happy. It is not about a change in the circumstances occurring to us by karma. It is, instead, about taking control over how we react to those circumstances.

However, and I am sure you have already noticed this, we have little ability to decide on our emotional reactions. Rather we are mostly at the mercy of how our emotions decide to react. This is the true misfortune, more unfortunate than any external misery or pain.

Taking control of our own emotional engine is not even slightly easy at all. But basically the entire Indian / Vedic approach to life – described in the Vedas and Puranas and Sūtras, especially like Yoga-Sūtra – is dedicated to helping us do exactly this. We have to avail ourselves of this mercy and grace. Without doing so, pain and suffering is just pain and suffering, nothing more (and pleasure and happiness is nothing more than a fleeting break from it).

it is not that suffering automatically makes us less materialistic. Often poverty and suffering makes us more vindictive, revengeful, spiteful, jealous, angry, etc. Bad karma, then, is not automatically good for detachment or spiritual progress. Nor is pleasure and good karma automatically going to make anyone addicted to materialistic things. Again, often we see the exact opposite. People with great riches and fame very often become extremely detached from such things and don’t want them.

To make any good out of any karma, the so-called good or the so-called bad, we must try to learn the paths of yoga described in Gītā and in more detail in Yoga-sūtra. Then we have to try to apply whatever we can from these paths, in some form of practice in our daily lives, however humble that may be.