F15. Why does resentment generate more karma than the original event?

The short answer: Because the original event happened once. The resentment happens every time the mind returns to it — every replay, every rehearsal of the grievance, every reactivation of the charge. One event deposits one impression. Years of resentment deposit the same impression hundreds or thousands of times.

The framework: The karma of an event is deposited when the event occurs and the impression is created. The depth and density of that impression corresponds to the charge of the original experience — its emotional intensity, the degree of identification with the harm, the quality of the nervous system’s response. One deposit. One entry.

Resentment is not a single event. It is a recurring engagement with the memory of the event — each engagement reactivating the impression and, through the reactivation, re-depositing a version of it. The nervous system does not distinguish cleanly between the original experience and the mental re-running of it. When the mind returns to the grievance with full emotional charge, the physiological response is similar to the original response. The impression depositing is similar in kind if not identical in depth.

This is why people who have experienced significant harm and spent years in unprocessed resentment find that the resentment has, in a real sense, become larger than the original event. The harm happened once. The nervous system has processed versions of it thousands of times. The total Sanchit deposit from the resentment may exceed the deposit from the original event by an enormous factor.

The tradition’s teaching on this is compassionate in its mechanics. You were harmed. That harm deposited an impression that will discharge in its own time through the karmic mechanics. The person who harmed you generated their own entry. What happens in your Sanchit from this point forward is in your hands — not your responsibility for what they did, but your Kriyaman for what you do with it now.

The turn: The original harm gave you one entry. The resentment you sustain gives you many. Understanding this is not a moral argument for forgiving. It is a mechanical description of what the sustained resentment is doing to the Sanchit. Stop adding. Not for them. For the account.