Meaning and elaboration
Meaning: The remover of all miseries.
Elaboration
Sarva Duhkha-Kshhayang-Kari means "She who removes all misery." This epithet reveals the compassionate and liberating aspect of Mahakali, even within her formidable form.
The Nature of Duhkha (Misery) In Hindu philosophy, Duhkha refers to suffering, pain, sorrow, and every form of distress that arises in body, mind, and karma. Many traditions teach that life in the material world is marked by Duhkha. This includes not only obvious suffering, but also subtler forms such as dissatisfaction, impermanence, and bondage to the cycle of rebirth.
The All-Encompassing Remover The word Sarva (all) is central here. Kali is not described as removing only temporary sorrow or surface pain, but as cutting at the very root of suffering. She is not merely a palliative force, but the power that addresses the existential condition at its source. Her removal of Duhkha includes: Physical pain and illness. Mental anguish, anxiety, and fear. Emotional grief and the sorrows born of attachment. Spiritual ignorance (avidya), understood as the deepest source of all other miseries. The cycle of birth and death (samsara) itself.
Kali as the Ultimate Healer and Liberator Though often depicted as fierce, this name reveals her deep benevolence. Her destructive energy is not random, but directed against ignorance, illusion (maya), and ego, the very structures that generate suffering. By destroying these, she opens the way to profound peace, freedom, and liberation (moksha). In this sense, she is the ultimate physician who removes the disease of conditioned existence at its source.
Devotional Significance To invoke her as Sarva Duhkha-Kshhayang-Kari is to surrender completely to her power to purify and transform. It is an acknowledgment that only the supreme Mother, in her infinite power and wisdom, can cut through the dense layers of karmic accumulation and worldly entanglement that bind the individual to suffering, and thereby grant ultimate release and eternal bliss.