It means, roughly, "suffering is the way of things."
It is in a constructed language (the name of it eludes me), created for a race of elves in the roleplaying game Earthdawn. The importance of the phrase is that the elves, to keep a new evil force at bay, cast an enchantment over their race that would cause thorns and other nastiness to grow through them, causing them constant pain and suffering. Somehow this kept the monsters away, something like they fed on the elves' good emotions.