The purpose of Vedic knowledge is to free the sincere inquirer from the suffering of birth, death, old age, and disease. Apart from these miseries, the Vedic writings describe another threefold set of miseries: miseries arising from the body and the mind, miseries inflicted by other beings such as humans, mosquitoes and beasts, and miseries arising from natural disturbances such as severe cold, heat, flood, earthquake, or drought.
