Karmic encounters: The people who come to teach

January 15, 2026

Dr Tanu Jain
Chief executive officer Bareilly cantonment board Ministry of defence

It was somewhere in the stillness of the Himalayas — that sacred silence where mountains meet clouds and time itself seems to pause — that I once met a wandering sadhu. The air was crisp, and the pine trees whispered secrets to the wind. I remember sitting beside him with a question that had been gnawing at my heart: “What should I do when someone wrongs me? When those I trust wound me so deeply that I no longer recognize myself?”

The sadhu looked at me with eyes that seemed to carry the calm of many lifetimes. After a long silence, he spoke softly, “When a snake bites you, do you chase the snake to take revenge, or do you think of healing the wound?” His words struck something raw within me. I sat there, speechless, realizing that all my life I had been chasing the snakes the people who hurt me hoping to extract apologies, explanations, or justice. But in doing so, I had allowed the venom to spread deeper inside me. The sadhu smiled gently and said, “The snake has done its part and gone its way. The poison remains only if you carry it. Heal yourself, not the snake.”

Those words changed something fundamental in me. I realized that life sends people our way not just to love us, but often to teach us sometimes gently, sometimes painfully. We crave love, belonging, and acknowledgment through others, but the truth is that each encounter, sweet or sour, is karmic in nature a mirror reflecting the unfinished lessons of our own soul.
We humans live barely sixty or seventy years, yet we spend most of that time tangled in the web of expectations hoping someone will stay, understand, or love us as we desire. The irony is that the very people we believe to be our “own” often become our greatest teachers. They hurt us not because they are cruel, but because our karma demands it because somewhere, the soul needs to grow through the fire of experience.
The Bhagavad Gita speaks of this divine balance:
“Sukha-duhkhe same krtva labhalabhau jayajayau”
Treat happiness and sorrow, gain and loss, victory and defeat alike.
Yet, how difficult this is! When our heart breaks, scriptures sound like distant echoes. When trust is shattered, philosophy feels powerless. And yet, over time, as the pain subsides, we begin to see what the wound was teaching us — patience, detachment, self-respect, or simply the art of letting go.I have held hatred and grief for long stretches of my life, believing that by doing so I was protecting myself. But I discovered that I was only chaining myself to the past. Osho says, “You cannot destroy darkness by fighting it; you can only bring light.” Similarly, you cannot erase pain by resisting it; you can only dissolve it by becoming aware of it.
The sadhu’s question “Do you run behind the snake?” has become my inner compass. Because every time I wanted to confront, prove, or argue, I remembered that the snake had already disappeared into the forest. What remained was my wound — and my choice whether to heal it or poison it further.
So many of us continue to suffer long after the event has passed. The mind replays the betrayal, the insult, the rejection — each time making the wound bleed anew. We convince ourselves that holding on will protect us, but in truth, it only blinds us to the beauty still present in life. Osho reminds us, “Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.” When we cling to people, expecting permanence, we are setting ourselves up for suffering. Love should be a fragrance — not a chain.
The world around us has become transactional. Emotions are weighed, care is conditional, and even love is often tied to convenience. But the answer is not to harden our hearts. The answer is to rise above — to shift our focus from people to purpose, from wounds to wisdom. To understand that not everyone who walks with us is meant to stay; some come only to awaken us.
There comes a time when you must whisper to yourself, “This person, this pain, this phase — it was all an old karmic account.” And when the lesson is learned, release it gracefully. Don’t curse it, don’t chase it. Thank it. Because that is how the karmic wheel turns from bondage to liberation.
Osho often said, “If you love a flower, don’t pick it. Let it be. Because love is not about owning it’s about allowing.” The same applies to relationships. The moment we try to own, we lose the essence. True love gives freedom — and true understanding accepts impermanence.

The Gita too echoes this eternal wisdom:

“Yogasthah kuru karmani”
Be steadfast in yoga, in balance, and perform your actions without attachment.
This is not indifference; this is mastery. It means that whether people come or go, your peace remains untouched. You do not stop loving, but you stop suffering because of love. You do not stop feeling, but you no longer drown in feelings. Forgiveness, too, is part of this mastery. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting what happened; it means choosing not to let it control your peace anymore. It is choosing yourself over your pain. It is saying, “I will heal the wound, not chase the snake.” And as you do this, something shifts within you. You begin to move from dependence to devotion, from hurt to harmony. You no longer need humans to complete you — you begin to need them only to reflect the divinity within you. In the end, the sadhu’s words were not just about people, but about life itself. Every encounter, every relationship, every joy and sorrow is a karmic messenger. Some come to bless you, some to test you, but all come to teach you.

And when you learn the lesson, you rise a little higher, your soul becomes lighter, your love becomes purer. Osho once said, “The real question is not whether life exists after death, but whether you are alive before death.” To be truly alive is to live with awareness — to love without fear, to lose without bitterness, and to trust that every soul that crosses your path is a teacher sent by existence itself. So when life stings, smile softly. Heal the wound, bless the snake, and walk on. Because in the great unfolding of karma, even pain is a form of grace. And somewhere, far away in the quiet folds of the Himalayas, the sadhu’s smile still lingers a reminder that those who hurt us were, after all, just people who came to teach.